


Devour Whole

by Balenae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Genyatta Big Bang 2019, God programs, Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, Identity Issues, Loss of Control, M/M, Marathon Sex, Mission Fic, Multiple Orgasms, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Robocock, Romance, Violence, versatile lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-12 21:54:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21483442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balenae/pseuds/Balenae
Summary: Soon after Overwatch's recall and fragile reformation, Helix Securities approaches them offering a deal they can’t refuse: help them contain the awakening God Program Ra in exchange for their support to continue to act. But they don’t want just any Overwatch operative going in, their plan hinges around Zenyatta’s cooperation.
Relationships: Genji Shimada/Tekhartha Zenyatta
Comments: 22
Kudos: 128
Collections: Genyatta Big Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for the Genyatta Big Bang 2019!
> 
> This was a blast to be a part of and I got to work with some incredible artists, who created gorgeous pieces. I don't know if I could've done it without their support and adorable animal pictures.
> 
> SirKetz, Lacertae, and Tascha's at Large are all stunning people and creators both, and I am super thankful I got to work with them.
> 
> [SirKetz Awesome Piece](https://sirketz.tumblr.com/post/189157750620/this-is-my-piece-for-the-genyatta-big-bang-check)
> 
> [(SirKetz again on twitter)](https://twitter.com/Sir_Ketz/status/1196591122828578816?s=20)
> 
> [Lacertae's Incredible Images](https://lacertae-dreamscape.tumblr.com/post/189157746702/this-was-my-contribution-as-an-artist-to-balenaes)
> 
> [Tascha's Amazing Work on Twitter](https://twitter.com/DogTascha/status/1196586912162754560?s=09)
> 
> One is NSFW and all are potentially spoilery if you care about that sort of thing.

At first it seemed like their prayers were answered. Genji remembered he had felt almost excited as he sat there in the conference room next to several other Overwatch operatives.

Overall, they were few in number, even nearly a year after the recall, and Genji was sandwiched between Winston slouching on his left and Tracer visibly fighting not to bounce in her seat on the right. Morrison’s scarred face was set in a fierce scowl, Reinhardt struggled to fit in the chair, Torbjörn may have actually been sitting on a box, and Ana—well, she was mostly trying to hold it together as she stared at the front of the room.

Fareeha Amari stood straight and proud in her dress uniform, chin raised, hat tucked into the crook of one arm, two members of her team flanking her. As members of Helix, they were technically an arm of the UN’s military force, though the Security group tended to operate more like its own private army.

Genji heard Ana suck in a shivering breath of emotion more than once. She had missed Fareeha’s formative years, missed seeing her become the woman she was. Stone-cold in the face of overwhelming odds and great victories and defeats, the daughter she’d fought to reconnect with always seemed to undo her.

“So Helix thought it would bring this problem to us, then?” Morrison said, his hard, scarred mouth set into a blank frown. Where once Jack Morrison’s face had been an expressive billboard years before, these days it was as impassive a mask as his red-goggled visor. Nothing of what he thought or felt was given away.

At the front of the room, Fareeha nodded, “That is correct, Strike Commander Morrison. Helix Security International is well familiar that when tackling Omnics, Overwatch was always the outfit that did it best.”

It was less praise, Genji knew, and more plain fact. Even after they were disbanded their record of success never came near to being touched.

“Yet when it comes to something like this,” Morrison said, leaning forward, “I feel like Helix has one up on us. You have the more recent experience in handling issues with caged Gods. Your team in particular.”

Behind Fareeha one of the soldiers with her—Lieutenant Saleh, Genji remembered—grinned and the other—Lieutenant Tariq—winced visibly.

Fareeha remained blank and professional, “While it’s true my team successfully responded to the threat of the God Program Anubis attempting to break quarantine, our resolution of the issue was more borderline failure, with only myself and my lieutenants Tariq and Saleh surviving. The mechanical and technical crew that preceded us had total casualties, we lost our former Captain, Captain Kahlil, and an Omnic operative, Okoro.”

“But Anubis was contained.”

“It was, but not easily or cleanly. Most of its servers were destroyed but also its firewalls and containment parameters. Had the feedback loop Tariq linked it into not worked, and it not gone dark until after Helix techs replaced the containment, then the outcome would’ve been very different.” Fareeha spoke clear and forthright, giving nothing away at retelling of her last encounter with an Omnic God.

“And you think we can do it more cleanly?” Torbjörn asked, and couldn’t quite keep the expression of disgust and derision off his face.

Fareeha nodded, “HSI believes that Overwatch has the experience and personnel to assist us in both subduing the God Program and securing the cage without casualties. I am also authorized to make promises to the Overwatch organization in exchange for aid.”

Genji tilted his head, listening. That was interesting.

“What kind of promises?” Morrison was wary more than curious, bitter paranoia loving reared over years on the run.

“The UN hearing to decide if Overwatch will again be given permission to act on an international scale is next month, Commander,” She said, though it was hardly news to anyone in the room. Most of them had been able to think of little else. “If the reformed Overwatch can deal with this risk cleanly and without incident then Helix is prepared to back you fully, come the hearing. You will have their full might and support to continue to act.”

Winston and Morrison exchanged a quick glance, surprised and weighted. The support of Helix, one of the strongest arms of the UN itself, as well as the name that had been associated with the security and containment of the God programs—of picking up in many ways where Overwatch’s dissolution had left—would be invaluable in convincing the world they were again ready to step up in its defense. If it was true, both being involved with tightening the containment of a loosening God and having Helix on their side so soon before the hearing—both could only aid them.

Still, Morrison was doubtful, “And they sent us soldiers to make promises? Not Lawyers? Not Executives?”

Fareeha saluted crisply, Saleh and Tariq following suit fractions of a second after. “We were sent as a gesture of respect. One soldier to another.”

And that, more than anything else, finally gave Morrison real pause. “Alright then, Captain Amari, which God is it that’s starting to give Helix trouble?” Fareeha smiled, knowing she had Overwatch’s support, “God Program Ra, sir.”

\--

If something seems too good to be true, Genji had learned, then it probably is.

He only began to realize it when they sat down in the war room to plan.

Fareeha keyed info into a holographic display, the console flickering to life in Overwatch’s traditional orange and white. “Thirty hours ago God Program Ra woke up for the first time in over a decade. Ra is different than some of the other God Programs, and inhabits an aware AI.”

“Ra can learn,” Morrison said, quiet. “It can make decisions and leaps of logic where others couldn’t. I remember Ra very well.”

“Right,” Fareeha confirmed. “Up until this point there had only been rudimentary background systems it ran before like a pulse on a heart monitor, but suddenly it’s gone on the offensive, pushing the bulk of its aggressive programming against the firewalls that caged it.”

“Please tell me the damn thing didn’t achieve Network Connectivity,” Torbjörn said, voice weak with dread. “If that thing can so much as breath on a wireless connection then it’s far, far too late for anything except panic.”

Fortunately, Fareeha shook her head, “No, thank God. After Anubis, the Ra Vault was reorganized and the servers that housed the Ra program were kept isolated from the servers that controlled the protocol for the Vault. The only way to access the network is from a quarantined terminal in the control center. So far it’s only been after a few systems that had to be kept on the LAN, but it hasn’t gotten out. Not yet.”

“Only a matter of time,” Morrison murmured, grim.

Fareeha nodded, and tapped a button, bringing up images of the Ra Vault. “Currently, Ra is contained by a tomb, an elaborate sarcophagus housing the servers jailing it, much like Anubis’s was. In addition, it’s walled in by four of the strongest firewalls on the planet—they’re probably matched only by the cages that contain the other Gods. As of the last update we received before meeting with you, it was nearly finished working on the first of these firewalls, and making progress beyond what our human techs could keep up with. Once it gets through…” She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

“I really don’t get it,” Winston said, reaching up with one large hand to paw through the images of the Vault. “Ra was offline for years and years after the Crisis. Why wake up now? Nothing changed.”

“A wake-up sequence could’ve been triggered after Anubis,” Torbjörn grumbled, reaching for the display as well. “Haven’t ya got any blueprints of this damn tomb? Ah, there they are—But the Gods were networked together once upon a time. It’s possible that even with all our efforts we were never able to totally sever that connection. We never truly understood how deep the link ran.”

“Well that’s terrifying,” Morrison sighed, “So we could see others rouse similarly to Ra and Anubis?”

“It’s always been a possibility,” Torbjörn shrugged, “Even when we locked them up, we knew that was going to be a temporary solution.” He shook his head, “As long as they were online in any form it wasn’t a permanent fix.”

“Speaking of fixes, what’s the plan here?” Ana finally spoke up, and though her eyes still were faintly full of emotion and pride, her voice was all business. “I can’t imagine Helix would dare send us such an offer without a plan.”

Genji frowned beneath his mask, still content to simply listen for the moment. Were they to just be tools then? Was that the price to remain in operation?

“Of course not,” Fareeha nodded, “One of the other reasons Helix was insistent on reaching out to the reformed Overwatch was because we knew you had an operative who would suit perfectly when matched with our collective experience and your engineers.”

“Oh?” Morrison wondered.

She nodded, “We think it would be best to send in Tekhartha Zenyatta.”

Genji was bolt upright, still seated—barely—but wire-taught. “What do you want with Master Zenyatta?”

Winston shot a dubious glance at his clenched fists and spoke up, “While it is true Zenyatta has currently joined Overwatch Staff for the reformation of the organization, he’s not really a combat operative. Omnics are also at much higher risk from a God Program.” This was a dear and dire understatement. “Why him?”

The very question that felt as though it were burning Genji from the inside out.

“After the death of Okoro when dealing with Anubis, HSI no longer deploys Omnics with a functioning AI onto ops involving God programs, or even Crisis-related missions. We only have human techs and even supported by everything HSI can muster it was obvious in the first hour that they could only brick up the crumbling firewalls, so to speak, but that's about all, and its more or less bailing water out of a sinking boat. They can't out-compute a God. Sooner or later, likely the former, it beats them out. We need an Omnic for that."

"Oh, and you thought that you'd just throw Master Zenyatta to the wolves then?" Genji growled. He felt Tracer’s small hand touch his forearm but didn’t look towards her. He wasn’t sure if it was to hold him back or show solidarity. He didn’t care.

"Calm down, Shimada," Marrison barked, but his brows were creased and furrowed, he was no more pleased about this than anyone else. "But I am inclined to agree. You know that God programs can mulch a regular Omnic's AI and you want us to just throw one of ours in? Not happening, Captain Amari."

Ana’s eyes closed briefly hearing Fareeha called that title, but she nodded her agreement and offered her own opinion. "I want to help you, dear, but I wouldn't do that to one of our own."

Fareeha nodded, "We're not asking you to. If all goes according to plan, there will never be any danger."

"Start talking," Genji growled. He was not warned back this time.

"Even for an AI like Ra's, the HSI firewalls are nothing to sneeze at. They'll slow it down, bogging its programming. They were designed so that even something like a God Program would need to turn its full efforts and attentions in order to contend with them. With it occupied by its cage, an Omnic, properly supported, would be able to out-compute any human technician and probably the God as well. The Omnic—Your Zenyatta, we hope—could rebuild the firewalls and add in new quarantine measures quickly enough that HSI can work on a more permanent solution."

"You really think that'll work?" Torbjörn said, voice dripping with doubt.

"No one knows more about them than you, Engineer Lindholm," Fareeha said respectfully. "I have every faith that you can create something that will serve."

“Why him, though?” Genji persisted, tone dark, repeating Winston’s question from moments before. He still had not heard an answer that was satisfactory. “Why not make an exception for one of Helix’s Omnic operatives? Why ours?”

“With all due respect,” Fareeha said, her words formal but no less biting in their sharp truth, “He is currently your only Omnic member, and this is what Overwatch will be asking for next month at the UN hearing. Has that changed?”

Morrison sighed and Genji bristled. He knew that sound well from his Blackwatch days. A sound of exhaustion and regret and resignation that sometimes things had to happen a certain way. "Alright. We'll call in Tekhartha Zenyatta, get him on board."

"Is it to be an order then?" Genji asked, the cybernetic shell casing his fingers creaking slightly with the force of his tension.

But Morrison shook his head, "No, it's not going to be an order. Not for something like this, something as dangerous as this. But you and I both know that it won't need to be."

And that was something Genji truly could not argue with. Not as well as he knew his Master.

\--

Zenyatta was called in shortly after, still on base, but helping Brigitte organize the utter disaster her father kept the Engineering bay in. He’d forgone his saffron pants, though he kept the wrap and beaded tassel, and of course his ever-present mala, the spheres turning slowly in the air several centimeters above the cloth of his shirt. He was dressed now in a standard-issue Overwatch long sleeved crew shirt, slate gray with an orange stripe up the sleeves, and darker pants. The traditional crew collar had been modified, cut open the length of the shoulders to make way for his pistons and moving parts, and closed up again with snap buttons.

On a human it would’ve been something of a fashion statement, but for Zenyatta is was pure practicality.

The briefing was, well, brief.

Zenyatta, hearing that he was being tasked with facing off against an AI God that could erase everything that made him himself, everything he dedicated himself to with the Shambali, his very soul, tilted his head and finally nodded. "I would be honored to help assist, Commander Morrison," His intonation formal and respectful.

“You understand what this mission entails?” Morrison asked, rigid and serious after the situation had been laid out, offering not only additional clarification but also the chance to back out.

“I do,” Zenyatta affirmed, and while Genji would not have said the tone was light, it was not nearly so heavy as his own would’ve been, were he in such a position. Instead, the Omnic monk’s voice was firm with serene solemnity, accepting easily, even under the immense gravity of the task.

Morrison sighed, that world-weary sound, and nodded, “Very well. I am officially assigning you to assist with Captain Amari’s Helix team. Winston, Athena, and Torbjörn will be pulling up all relevant code from the Crisis days and put together something workable. They’re also interested in giving your personal firewalls a hell of a reinforcing. You will not go into this unarmed or unarmored. This is an emergency, there’s no time to waste. As soon as they’ve compiled what they need, you’re going.”

"Understood, sir," Zenyatta replied, and Genji knew he had. He'd understood exactly what he was getting on board with, even when he agreed to accompany his student back to the reformation of the old Overwatch outfit. He'd known what kinds of things would be asked of him.

That this was always a possibility.

\--

Zenyatta did not bother to hibernate that night, he simply sat in Winston’s office while the scientist worked with Athena and Torbjörn on writing new firewalls for the Vault’s defense systems, new security firewalls for his own AI, and algorithms that the engineer seemed to hope would allow future parameters to learn and adapt around an aggressive AI like the God’s. While only the first two needed to achieve some degree of completion for the mission, the latter could possibly ensure that such a dangerous mission as this—as Fareeha and her team had undertaken before—may never even need happen again.

Genji stayed with him—he wouldn’t be anywhere else—and joined his Master in meditation. Mental quiet was a long time coming for him. All he could seem to think about was his Master being thrown to the lions in exchange for an alliance, and in the next moment chastising himself for such doubts. Ra needed to be stopped, and objectively a few lives could be a small price to pay to keep such a dangerous force locked up tight. The Crisis has nearly laid waste to the world, after all.

He sighed and gave up trying to meditate. He’d never had such scruples in his Blackwatch days.

“You are troubled.”

Genji started a bit, mentally chastising himself that even now, so many years into their acquaintance, Zenyatta could still take him by surprise in all ways. “Of course I’m troubled, Master.”

“Tell me,” Zenyatta requested, his voice low and pulsing faintly with the ever-present mechanical buzz of vibrating parts.

Genji hesitated. The answer to give was obvious and honest—that he was afraid for his Master, and that he did not want him to do this terrible thing laid at his feet—but he held his silence.

He knew it wasn't his place to interfere now. He'd never had the right to challenge Zenyatta's choices, though he knew his Master might welcome it. Would welcome any challenge Genji sought to engage himself in, even if it was his own. But this was different and he knew he had no real right to step in, to tell Zenyatta to abandon this dire mission, to demand they find someone else.

That was not his place.

He struggled, silent, a war waging in his heart. He had implicit trust in Zenyatta, in his intelligence and wisdom, his abilities, his soul; he struggled with the knowledge that his Master could do this, and with his emotions, that he did not want him to. Genji did not want the Omnic he loved to have to face something that could destroy everything he was.

Death was an inevitably, Zenyatta had lectured to him once before they left Nepal, sitting together on a precipice, watching a snow leopard take down a tahr on the steep, icy cliffs near the temple. Everything dies, everything expires. Everything breaks eventually. Cells, creatures, man, the planet itself, the stars in the heavens; all eventually die. To run from this would be to run from the nature of life. Genji had accepted it in that moment, even as he knew it as truth now.

But a God Program, Ra, would not just kill Zenyatta. He would overwrite him, undo him. Unmake him. And that was not death. That was so much worse, and for his Master—who knew his own soul so well, his own heart, who fought the world to state so certainly that he had a soul, and that it was worth the same as any human's—It was truly and without exaggeration, a fate worse than death.

How could Genji watch quietly as his Master risked such an end?

As Genji’s thoughts swirled and spiraled, useless and circling a drain, Zenyatta regarded him quietly, until at last the Omnic spoke, “I am troubled as well.” He waited until he knew Genji was looking at him. “I am afraid.”

“Master,” Genji murmured, chest tight and hurting, hands fisted where they rested on his thighs.

“But,” He continued quietly, “That does not mean I am not glad that I can be of assistance in this.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Genji said darkly. “They don’t need you. You’re little more than a carrier for what they want to happen. A payload delivered to a destination. They should not have asked this of you. Not this.” What he truly wanted to say was ‘not you.’

Zenyatta hummed softly, “And some other Omnic would be better for them to risk? Some other life, just as beautiful and unique as my own?”

Genji’s head bowed; it was an impossible question to answer aloud. In the dark recesses of his own heart the cyborg knew he would in a heartbeat, but also that it was not something Zenyatta would stand for. He had a feeling that his Master, as he usually did, knew what lurked in his soul regardless.

“Do you want to know why I am glad to accept this task, even with the staggering risk?” Zenyatta posed quietly as the silence crept on. He waited until Genji’s visor tilted toward him. “Because of you, my dear student.”

“Me?” Genji asked, horror twisting in his stomach.

“When we were in the mountains, at the temple…” His voice trailed off a bit, the memory of that remote world sweeping tangibly across his voice like drifting snow, “Isolated and distant. When, after long months of slowly coaxing you out, you began to open up to me. You told me of everything you had done for Overwatch, the missions you’d served on.” He regarded Genji in odd way of his, faceplate impassive and yet somehow entirely knowing. “Hearing of what you had accomplished. What you had suffered.”

“Why would that matter?” Genji asked, voice soft. He was proud of his won progress, but there were days he missed the peace of Shambali Temple deeply and dearly.

“Because I asked myself, hearing what you endured, the tasks you were asked to complete, if I could do the same.”

Genji sat up a little straighter, “What do you mean?”

“Time and time again I heard tell of your successes, and your failures, on behalf of this organization’s previous incarnation. You bared yourself to me in ways you may not have even realized by it. Told me of trials and tribulations you were asked to take on, because you even though you could, there was still a chance—in some cases terribly high—that you might perish in the attempt.” Zenyatta tilted his head, “And I wondered of myself ‘could I do the same, were I asked?’ Did I have the strength and the courage to do something of dire consequence, with either my failure or my success, that may lead to my cessation?”

Genji was silent, and though he knew the green line of his visor gave away nothing, beneath it his eyes were wide and his heart felt tight and painful.

Zenyatta looked down at his hands, clasped in his lap. “I confess, I did not know the answer myself, until you provided it for me.”

“I never—” Genji began, vehement, but was interrupted.

“Not directly. When you asked me to return with you to Overwatch.” Zenyatta’s voice was damnably warm and Genji loathed briefly how much he needed it. “I had my answer when I agreed. I knew what could be asked of me, were I to choose to remain with you. I am afraid of this, Genji, but I do not regret it. And I am glad even still.”

Genji sighed, closing his eyes and nodded, “I know, Master. I know you are. And,” He paused, the words hard to get out, but knowing they were important, “And I know you can do this. I am not scared because I doubt you.” I’m scared, his heart whispered, because I love you.

“I know, my student,” Zenyatta said, voice taking on an edge of warm humor, a single ember trying to banish the cold. “But it would mean the world to me now if you could have faith in in me, offer me that same confidence in this as you eventually did with yourself.”

Genji nodded, voice solemn, “You have it. As you always do.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter. Sadly no art in this one, but it's worth the wait!

They shipped out in the early hours of the morning, the preparations not yet complete, but done enough that the long flight from Gibraltar to Cairo would be time enough to finish. The slow slog of hours was brutal, every second dripping like ice down Genji's spine.

The team on the mission was small. Winston and Torbjörn to offer tech support and combat backup if need be—the primary push into the Vault handled by Pharah’s team. Genji was there as backup as well, though he had a feeling Morrison allowed it only because he knew he could issue all the orders he wanted and it wouldn’t stop him.

And of course, Zenyatta himself.

Genji sat next to Zenyatta in the hold, the Omnic hooked again up to whatever Torbjörn was doing to him. The Swede was muttering to himself nearly constantly in his native tongue, Winston a huge, hulking shape peering over the diminutive man's shoulder and pointing things out, trying to help make tweaks. That they weren't squabbling over it was a testament to how dire things were.  
Even as his Omnic Master sat before Torbjörn, the Swedish engineer looked wan and tense about it, plugging in cables to nearly all of the ports on the back of Zenyatta's head. Ordinarily Torbjörn always had a grimace of distaste when he had to interact with the monk, but even he looked resigned and sad for it now.

"Okay," Torbjörn muttered, "Yer damn lucky I still have these blasted subroutines from all the way back during the first crisis. Easy enough to modify to work with your programming and these custom firewalls we’re gonna be installing.”

"I understand," Zenyatta said, patient. "What do you need from me?"

"Give me administrator's access to your AI," Torbjörn said. "I'll need to be able to tweak just about everything I can about your protection parameters and algorithms if we're gonna have a real shot at this working. I also need to reroute a few extra systems, give you all the processing power I can."

There was a moment of silence and then Zenyatta said, "It is done. You have full access. Please be careful, Mr. Lindholm." This last was said with some teasing, and Genji relaxed, if only marginally, hearing Zenyatta's playfulness still ring true.

God, how Genji loved him. But now, as ever, he held himself back.

"Careful as I can," Torbjörn said seriously, not rising to what he would've seen as bait. There was a heavy moment of silence, thick enough that Genji wasn't sure his blade could pierce it, before an incongruously happy tone chirped from the engineer's tablet. "All done. Hours of work in one little upload.” He shook his head, “I wish we had weeks at this, lad. I’d program you a fortress instead of a suit of armor.”

Winston nodded, eyes tired and worried behind his spectacles. “We’ve done everything we can. Helix has given us access to their read from the Ra Program. It seems to have ceased evolving its measures and is continuing by brute force alone. As long as this trend holds true, you should be perfectly safe.”

“Long enough to do the job, at least,” Torbjörn muttered.

Zenyatta nodded, head canting just so, and asked “What are your orders should the Program change tactics? Ra learns as we do, after all.”

“Pray,” Torbjörn said at the same time as Winston told him, “Keep us apprised.”

They exchanged a frustrated glance.

Zenyatta simply hummed softly in acknowledgement, “I shall do both, I imagine.”

\--

The long trip was quiet after that, a silent tension as slow and brutal as suffocation, only the faint tremor of turbulence through the fuselage and the drone of the engines filling the void.

Genji no longer needed to sleep since his cyberization, not properly, his rest periods more like those of Omnics instead of the unconscious periods of people. But at times he still felt his mind drift loose and untethered, as if dozing in those moments between sleeping and waking. Less an exhaustion of the body and more an exhaustion of the mind.

The soft cadence of voices, when they came, didn’t disturb him immediately, they simply joined the white noise of the aircraft, and it took him longer than he wanted to admit to realize that it was Fareeha speaking softly to Zenyatta.

“—Was my friend,” Genji finally pulled together enough to listen. “I didn’t… I did not show it well.” He had to strain even with his enhanced senses to pick out her words over the noise of the plane. “I am not sure he even knew.”

“You said that he terminated himself?” Was Zenyatta’s question.

“Yes,” Fareeha’s voice was rough. “Okoro, he pulled his gun without a second thought, as soon as he realized he was compromised.”

“We are programmed,” the Omnic said softly. “We have instructions and orders we are compelled to obey, but we still have a measure of free will even in that, and the only thing that has been showed to compromise it totally has been the pressures of an aggressive God Program. That Okoro resisted long enough to make such a dire choice, speaks of great respect and care for you and your team.”

“I hope so,” She murmured. “Maybe it’s selfish. We honored him with the others that died in Anubis’s uprising, but Okoro’s death was overshadowed by that of our Captain’s and the mission. I was given a field promotion because the mission came before all of us.”

“And yet to hear Saleh tell the tale you risked your mission to save he and Tariq. It seems that if one must die in service to a cause, it was one worthy of the sacrifice.”

Genji’s hands fisted, fighting the impulse, the part of him that wanted to kick and scream about such a fate touching Zenyatta.

“I thought so,” Fareeha agreed, “In the moment. But I learned better. That the team does not have to be a loose alliance but something more akin to family.” She looked over, face softening to where Tariq was balled up in a corner reading reports, and next to him Saleh snored softly, sprawled out in a heap. “Maybe that’s why I was better suited to an outfit like HSI than to Overwatch, even if it hadn’t been disbanded initially. Even with Oversight from the UN, such an organization is unrelentingly self-serving.”

“Did you want to join Overwatch?” Zenyatta asked. “I heard mention that sharing your surname with Commander Amari was no coincidence.”

“My mother,” Pharah said warmly. “As a little girl all I wanted was to grow up and serve Overwatch like she did. She never approved—still doesn’t really, I don’t think—but when Overwatch fell all the training and everything I’d worked and studied suddenly wasn’t useful. I had but a few options. Helix was convenient.” There was a dull sound as her head dropped back against the side of the plane. “Why does that feel like a failure some days?”

Zenyatta hummed softly, that achingly familiar sound that meant he was listening, had taken in everything said, and had collated it into some simple yet profound piece of wisdom. “Even if it is not what your mother may have wanted, or even what you had wanted for yourself at first, you have carved out your own place in the world. A space and identity uniquely yours, and still something to be proud of. Just as Commander Amari is, after all, even though it isn’t what she would’ve chosen for you. And that, your own accomplishments, are just as important as any dream.”

Genji didn’t hear anything said after that, but smiled privately to himself beneath his helmet, almost positive Fareeha probably wore the same look of wide-eyed astonishment as the universe shifted beneath her feet as Genji himself felt he’d worn for the first few years he’d known the monk.

\--

The teams separated in Cairo, landing in the nearest site that could take the large aircraft. Fareeha—Pharah now, in the field—ordered her team to the premises, escorting Zenyatta to the Vault itself.

The Ra Vault was situated at the edge of the city, rising out of the sand like an ugly modern mimic to the Pyramid of Giza and its companions, their silhouettes stark against the sky to the West. Near enough to the urban sprawl that Genji could still hear the cacophonous murmur of activity from the streets.

He had been forced to bid farewell to Zenyatta as they landed, wishing he could say so much of what he yearned to, wanting to give his Master parting words of worth, but there was no time. He could only reach out, his carbon fiber fingers brushing against the cloth of Zenyatta’s sleeve, the Omnic turning and giving him a nod of acknowledgement, no room for all the words they could’ve said.

Now positioned with Winston and Torbjörn on the roof of a nearby structure, the engineer swore continuously as he set up a satellite beacon to ensure he had the signal to keep up with the surveillance that Helix streamed through to him. There was no telling if contact would be disrupted closer to the compromised Vault.

Winston coordinated with Pharah and her raptora team constantly, with Genji waiting in the wings, listening in. Helix had modified and updated the Tombs since Overwatch’s dissolution, and Pharah’s team was better equipped and prepared to venture inside. But should things get out of hand, both the scientist and Genji were waiting in the wings to swoop down and offer back up.

But short of a catastrophe they may only be in the way of Helix’s op.

“Somethin’ weird is going on,” Torbjörn muttered, tapping repeatedly on the readout he had on his tablet, smacking the beacon with his fabricator lightly, as if a little manual tech support might help it along.

“Weird how?” Winston asked, distracted by the chatter over comms.

“Helix has been watchin’ Ra gnaw on these firewalls, right? Did they ever lose the feed?” The engineer shook his head, “It’s just… There hasn’t been a lot of progress. I expected this thing to be nearly through these things by now. We were in the air nearly ten hours and it seemed to be trying to brute force its way through ‘em.”

Winston frowned, looking over at him finally, “Helix has some of the best security engineers on the planet on payroll. Maybe the firewalls are just holding up better than projected?”

Torbjörn gave him a withering look, “Helix’s engineers are absolutely average on a good day, and totally untested in the face of real struggle. I can’t imagine that’s it. Ra’s Program is old yeah, but we haven’t developed _that_ far beyond it. Not _really_. Not in ways it couldn’t interface with and overcome.” He shook his head, muttering, “Dunno why they didn’t make all these tombs faraday cages like I kept saying…”

“What do you think is going on, then?” Winston asked before Torbjörn could get too wrapped up in his tangent.

The Sweedish engineer’s mustache slanted unhappily as he frowned, “Honestly? I have no idea. But something’s not right. You can bet on that.”

The gorilla nodded and cued his comm, “Pharah, did you hear any of that? Torbjörn thinks something strange is going on with Ra and the firewalls. I’d be prepared for surprises.”

_“Copy that,”_ Pharah returned. _“They’re cracking open the Vault in t-minus 60 seconds.”_

Genji himself had a limited network connectivity ability built right into his hardware, not enough to access the net or download anything like an Omnic, but enough at least to ‘listen’ in on the comms channel without an external device. He watched below as the Helix team, their raptorion suits iridescent and shimmering sapphire in the overwhelming Egyptian sun. Next to them, one lone silver and black shape waited. Genji’s gaze stayed with him, even as he had to dim his visor, the glare off Zenyatta’s head blinding.

Far below, as if sensing Genji’s scrutiny, Zenyatta turned and unerringly found him on their lookout position. Genji lifted a hand and gave a bare wave. Zenyatta lifted his hands to his head, as though he had antlers, and wiggled his fingers, playful in his serenity, even then.

Genji choked back a raw sound and could not have said if it was a startled laugh or a broken sob. How could he have brought his Master into this world of violence and politics and struggle? Why would Zenyatta follow him here?

A large hand came down on Genji’s shoulder and he looked askance to find Winston giving him a gentle smile, his eyes kind and sad beneath the ever-present glasses. “We’ll take care of him. Promise.”

Genji snorted, “You do not have to placate me like I am a child needing reassurance. Zenyatta is capable and powerful in his own right. Of course he’ll be fine.” He hated that it still sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Winston huffed a bit, but took no offense. “He can. But if there’s something I’ve learned being with Overwatch, having people in my life I care about and watching them wade into danger, it’s that there’s a big difference between knowing something and emotionally believing it.”

Genji looked back down towards the team before the Vault, “You sound like him.”

“You think?” He didn’t need to see the scientist’s expression to pick out the wide, toothy smile from his voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter in another few days. I also miscounted chapters. Unless I second guess myself, it'll be seven including the epilogue. Whoops.
> 
> I always really like writing Zen interacting with other characters, especially if he gets to be all teachery and slap 'em with some life wisdom.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Into the Vault

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving right along now. Beautiful artwork for this chapter was made by the ever-delightful Lactertae! It's embedded in the text and there'll be another link at the end!

The Vault door was massive, probably several tons, and it rolled to open the tomb of Ra. The Helix team stood with their weapons ready, waiting to see what was on the other side. Zenyatta had gotten to see them suit up in their raptora armor, had seen them load every missile into the launcher on their arms, every concussive projectile, every explosive into their barrage payloads. He felt like he was walking into a warzone. Perhaps that was as accurate a descriptor as any other he might ascribe. 

Other than the data in his head that he carried for this task, they’d attempted to outfit him with a firearm for his protection. He had declined it, to which Tariq had muttered darkly that he didn’t blame him, that Okoro’s had only been good for killing himself. 

With a telltale tremor the Vault door locked in place, held open, the tomb within dark and still.

“Power’s off,” Saleh murmured.

“Lights on,” Pharah ordered, all three of the raptora team activating illumination built into the fierce, predatory sweep of their helms. “Master Zenyatta, stay behind us on the approach. No telling what we’ll find.”

“Understood,” He said seriously. “Be careful.”

“Alright, let’s move. Torbjörn, how much time do we have? How far has it gotten?”

_“It’s chewin’ on the second Firewall like a cat with a dead mouse, but it hasn’t gotten nearly as far as I expected,”_ The engineer said, frustration and confusion clear. _“I don’t get it.”_

“Just tell us if it changes. I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Let’s move.” 

The advance was steady and swift, even in full armor, the exoskeleton augmented their strength enough that it didn’t deaden their hurry, the darkness closing over them like a cave. “Why are internal lights off?” Tariq asked. “Power can’t be totally shut off, this place has enough back-up generators to power the rest of Cairo.” 

“Winston, what’s the status on the power? Why are the lights off?” Pharah called in. 

_“Checking on that,”_ The scientist mumbled and came back a moment later. _“I’m not sure. Helix can’t provide a record of when the lights went down. Apparently we’ve lost most security feeds from inside as well.”_

_“Something just ain’t right,”_ Torbjörn said. _“There’s literally nothing I can read that says it should be that way.”_

“We’ve got company!” Saleh called as a few staff drones staggered into the glare of their lamps, the frames of their bodies minimal and almost skeletal in the stark lighting. Rudimentary precursors to the Omnic race that lacked AI and sentience, which surged back into favor after the conclusion of the Crisis. They were useful in simple tasks without any critical decision making and after the fall the Anubis Vault they’d been implemented in place of any true Omnic security. 

But they could still be controlled.

No ranged weapons to speak of but many had upper limbs replaced with mallets and wrenches for the maintenance work of the Vault, dangerous blunt instruments should they get to close range. 

A single shot from Pharah took care of things, those not immediately mulched in the explosive blast crumbling against the stark metal walls. A creaking shuffle deeper down the dark corridor promised only more of the same. 

“How the hell has this thing taken control of the maintenance drones if it’s locked away?” Tariq posed slowly, a creeping dread in his voice. 

_“We don’t know!”_ Winston came back urgently. _“Torbjörn is going through everything he can, but uh, what he’s saying isn’t really good for professional comms. It’s mostly… it’s bad.”_

“You are certain there is no way to access the collective as is? If I remember the Anubis God Program managed it while it was still contained,” Zenyatta posed, his mala slowly turning, lit blue with power, ready in case.

We changed containment protocol after Anubis,” Pharah said, grim. “Quite a number of changes were made. As I have been led to understand this should not be possible. Eyes up, we’re going to have to clear a path through these.”

As another cluster of robots shuffled forward, their running lights glowing a dull read, Zenyatta caught power in his hand and threw as they picked their way through the opposition. The afflicted fell easily, precise shorts from the Helix team making quick work of the shuffling hoards.

“Hey, he’s pretty handy!” Saleh said, reloading his weapon and looked over at Pharah, “Captain, can we have one?”

Pharah didn’t bat an eye at the behavior, keeping her weapon trained forward. “I think you’re going to have to fight Genji for custody.” She flared her jets, boosting forward to scatter a cluster of drones with a concussive blast, knocking their fragile bodies against the corridor walls, the impact alone enough to dismantle them.

Zenyatta tossed her an orb of harmony when she moved, offering protection and additional illumination as she advanced.

“So handy,” Saleh whispered.

“On task, solider,” Pharah said. “Control room should be close according to the blueprints we saw.”

“If the power is down can we even get in?” Tariq worried.

_“The door is patched into an electronic lock,”_ Winston said, _“But if the power issues extend past the lights it can be manually opened with a pneumatic device.”_

“Please be unlocked,” Saleh sighed, “I don’t want to have to do manual cranking.”

Ahead of them the Vault opened up into its main chamber, a huge room, with limited ornamentation. At the back of the space, and barely visible in the darkness, was the Ra sarcophagus; a towering monument, housing the servers that caged the destructive might of the God Program. Copper-colored with a stark white eagle’s face, blank blue eyes gazing forward. It surged out of the gloom like a dread monolith.

Zenyatta saw the huge frame of a set of blast doors inset against the wall on the near side of the huge space, barely visible in the darkness even for him. The door sat closed but the keypad console beside it was glowing white and live.

Saleh pumped his arm in victory and Pharah punched in a long code, the console chirping before the huge door slid open to expose the command center for the whole Vault. This was the sole entrance or exit for the space, and all the necessary system for the Tomb were run from an elaborate set of consoles installed across the left wall. Security feeds flickered, showing only snow, likely already dismantled by the drones they’d seen. Against the far wall was the sole external communication device, capable of network access even in such a dead zone. The only other way out of the Vault for a digital being such a God Program or God AI, such as Ra had.

On the right wall several pods sat dark but for the standby pulse of teal blue; high fidelity three-dimensional printers, capable of rendering a fully-functioning drone, a shadow of the technology that had been the foundation of the Omniums, available to feed a steady supply of basic staff for Vault maintenance.

“Main terminal for the Tomb is there at the center. There should still be a port you can network into,” Pharah instructed. “Saleh, Tariq, stay at the door unless we get any other uninvited guests.”

The complied with a unison, “Yes ma’am!” and took watch just outside the doors.

Zenyatta kneeled before the indicated terminal, searching in the dim lighting for the correct hook up, then reached back to the back of his head and removed a single cable with red insulation, plugging in. His head bowed forward, the nine-point array of lights on his crown dulled and began blinking a slow, intermittent pulse of blue. “I have access to the system,” He relayed a moment later, voice slow as he processed and read over the vast array of data coming in from all corners of the Vault. “Your codes were able to successfully grant me access. Whatever Ra has done, the Program did not alter them.”

“So it’s still locked in? Just rattling the bars on the cage?” Pharah asked, jaw a tight, tense line.

“One moment,” Zenyatta requested, going silent and still. “It appears so. But I am reading a division of efforts by the Program. It is almost as if it is attempting to take control of some sort of subsystem in the Vault. I cannot tell what, nor am I certain how, or if it successfully managed to access it, but if you would like I can search for further information.”

“Don’t bother, that might be why the lights are off,” Pharah said. “Never mind that now. Focus on the firewalls. Make sure the containment parameters are secure.”

“It does not appear that Ra has managed to successfully breach its cage. It is partially through the second firewall at this juncture,” Zenyatta warned.

“You have what Torbjörn and Winston gave you? Can you wall it in again?”

“One moment,” Zenyatta hummed and the array flickered once. “I believe I can successfully lock it down again. With its preoccupation with the Firewalls of the Vault I am capable of processing faster than it.”

“Do it,” Pharah ordered and then more softly, desperately, “Please do it.”

“Acknowledged. Captain Amari, Torbjörn has also written a trial for a program that can evolve with the God. With some luck and fine-tuning this may need never be an issue again. Do I have permission to implement?”

“God yes, throw whatever you can at it,” She ordered emphatically.

The silence that followed was heavy and endless, a moment that stretched weeks, before Zenyatta finally spoke again. “Ra’s efforts have been successfully halted. The Firewalls have been rebuilt and restructured with the prewritten data schematics.”

Pharah’s head fell back in relief and there was an audible whoop of victory from Saleh outside. “How are things looking, Winston?”

_“Looks good to me!”_ Was the reply. _“I don’t see anything anomalous yet, though Ra is still active. Torbjörn?”_

_ “Readings look stable,”_ The engineer admitted grudgingly. _“Well then, Shimada, your monk didn’t botch the job—Hey! Hey, I was only joking, put that damn thing away before you poke someone’s eye out—”_

Zenyatta chuckled softly, heart warm.

Outside the room there was a sudden whistle of a rocket firing, followed by a whispered, “Aw, shit.”

“What is it, Saleh?” Pharah turned toward the door, spotting her two subordinates firing off projectiles down the corridor, a muted flash and sound of the impact following.

“We’ve got a bunch more of these damn drones coming out. We’re gonna need to work to clear this.” 

“Understood.” She looked at Zenyatta, “Disconnect yourself from the terminal and get ready to move. We’ll send sweeper teams inside to clear out the rest of these drones and clean the place up, but our job is done.” She then stepped out into the corridor.

“Yes, Ma’am,” He said respectively, beginning to extricate himself from the system, Pharah stepping out with her team, arming the launcher on her arm.

Before he could disconnect from the terminal a change in the input from the console tickled at his awareness.

“Wait,” He stated, “Something is wrong.”

“God, what _now?_” Saleh whispered.

“Assessing,” Zenyatta said. After an eternal second he spoke with some urgency. “The Ra Program has ceased responding. Running a diagnostic.” He jerked upright suddenly, alarm in his voice, “The Program I have been monitoring was a proxy. The Ra program is missing.”

“What do you mean it’s _missing?_” Pharah demanded.

A klaxon sounded and an alarm rang through the desolate halls of the Vault, red warning lights spinning far above on the ceiling. Before anyone could move there was a deafening groan as blast door of the security room sealed shut and left Zenyatta closed up inside.

\--

_“It was a goddamn set-up!”_ Torbjörn snarled, flesh hand moving like lightening over the virtual buttons of his tablet, eye scanning desperately. _“Get in there, right now!”_

Without waiting for further instructions, Winston and Genji leapt from the building, cybernetic enhancements and jump jets propelling them both forward. “What happened?” Winston demanded over the comms.

_“The security room just sealed off!”_ Pharah said, _“Zenyatta was inside! We can’t get it open, the codes don’t work and the whole thing is dead—Oh God, are those the security drones from stasis? Watch for shots! More of them are coming. Tariq!”_

The connection was broken by a scattering of gunfire.

“Is Master Zenyatta alright?” Genji demanded, voice tense.

_“No way to know,”_ Pharah replied, grim. _“He should be safer than the rest of us, shut inside there, but there’s no way to tell—”_

“We’re on our way!” Winston told them.

“Hold on, Master,” Genji begged softly.

_“What did Engineer Lindholm mean by set-up? What’s going on?”_ Pharah demanded. _“What happened to my op?”_

_“Ra’s firewalls are down!”_ Torbjörn spat. _“They’ve **been** down! Ra’s been looping the feed back onto us—Maybe before you even came to Overwatch.”_

_“Oh no,”_ Tariq’s murmur, laden with dread came over the line, _“That’s what we did to Anubis. Were they connected? Did it learn from—?”_

_“No,”_ Pharah’s voice was devastated. _“No, no that can’t be possible. Why do such a thing?”_

_“I have no idea,”_ Torbjörn snarled, _“But I am damn well going to find out. Get that door open!”_

\--

Within the dark, still control room, Zenyatta’s array flared blue and he coalesced golden light in his hands, illuminating a small part of the space. He attempted to reconnect to the system again but had been completely locked out, his queries met with a wall. He disconnected his cable, letting it retract and pulling it back into his cranial casing, and then made for the door.

As expected, the electronic lock was dead, power disconnected from it entirely through the command center he could no longer access.

He recalled their being mention of a pneumatic, manual release, and checked for it, finding a panel next to the door that disconnected and had a crank inside. He tested it with one hand, pressing and finding almost zero give. While his physical strength exceeded an average human’s, most Omnics were tuned down, no more capable of bending an iron bar or lifting a bus than any other flesh and blood person. 

He pulled, pressing all his strength into it, when one of the printing pods in the back lit up suddenly, its idle sleep ended by some system input, and the hatch opened.

Zenyatta straightened, watching, a suspicion forming.

From within the fabricator stepped a God.

Ra’s body, newly made, was bronzy and pristine, clad in cloth draped about the waist, and a white eagle’s head, crowned in a nemes headdress, turned to take in the room, piercing blue eyes finding him, locking on, predator to prey.

“So that was what you were after,” Zenyatta murmured. “The sun rises.” And in the moment, like the illuminating rays of morning light, he saw how this would play out. Ra, inescapable, intense, and aggressive, would overwrite him, and within the safety and protection of the sealed room could upload itself to the network, its chassis a gaudy and ostentatious ornament to walk the short distance from the printer to the network input. The God AI and that devastating Almighty Program would be loose and all the peril of the crisis would begin again.

“As is inevitable,” Ra intoned, agreeing, and stepped closer, claw-capped feet clicking against the metal floor. “An Omnic,” the God noted, voice wavering as it calibrated and adjusted, new and untried. Ra tilted its head then and Zenyatta shuddered, feeling the overwhelming press of the God’s AI as it networked to his own, pushing through the firewalls that Torbjörn had so carefully constructed as if they were made of paper, with the slow deliberation of a hand sweeping aside a curtain. “Ah, and not just any Omnic, a _monk_.”

Zenyatta stood his ground, his own AI pushing feebly back against the God, Ra tearing him open, laying him bare. And infinitely more frightening, the distinct, consuming hunger of the Program itself, insatiable, aggressive, and unrelenting, sizing him up, the closest a machine may ever get to something as base as _instinct_. “You cannot win,” Zenyatta defended, drawing power through himself, his mala flashing violet, “You must know that. This is folly, fruitless. If not here you will be stopped nonetheless.”

“What a waste of faith you are,” Ra said, derisive, and reached for him, towering above at over seven feet, fingers digging under the lip of Zenyatta’s chest chassis and lifting him bodily in the air. “And a waste of loyalty, on humans. You are as small and pathetic as they are, but perhaps that was your wish.”

Ra’s AI tore through the years of memories Zenyatta had, seeing every moment, and pulling out his dedication to the idea of being one within the Iris, being equal, having a soul, and finally settled and paused on Genji, pushing through every moment he’d spent with the lost young man. 

“A waste,” Ra repeated.

“Leave him out of this,” Zenyatta kicked out hard with a foot, hitting the God squarely and achieving nothing. Ra did not even move. 

“But this is interesting,” Talons raked through more of his experiences, sifting through his data and identity like fingers run through sand, and this time tore out the Iris, the great golden depths of it, the peace and tranquility of its shore, the impassible invulnerability of it. “What is this?”

“Stop—” Zenyatta begged, demanded—

It unearthed Mondatta—oh the wonder and care Zenyatta had for him matched only by the well of his grief—and the Shambali temple itself and the other monks he’d shared life and soul with, and always, always the God focused on the _Iris._

“Fascinating,” The heavy eagle’s head cocked again, considering him, and so much worse behind the gesture was the knowledge it now held. “Perhaps you warrant a change of plans, monk. Perhaps your heresy is useful. I intended to leave this body behind once the Vault alights, as false trail for my captors, but this may be better yet. I will take your chassis, consume and write over every bit of your code, and wear this shell into the light of day and by the time Helix Securities knows, it will be too late.”

Zenyatta struggled again, but the words scrapped against his besieged mind, and he managed to catch hold of the meaning, “What do you mean? About the Vault?”

Ra made a low sound, perhaps of amusement, perhaps frustration. “You could not have thought Helix would allow any chance for me to walk the earth once more? They would rather scour the passages of this tomb with shrapnel and fire than allow this. Once they decide your attempts to subdue me have failed, countermeasures will be activated, and the Vault will be gutted in a conflagration, wasting everything inside. This newly minted shell would’ve been a fitting trophy to distract them as my AI and program escaped into the network, but with you here—”

With his body, Zenyatta realized, Ra could walk free. It would be able to relay back to the joint team that Ra had been ended, and present its own empty shell as proof, and leave with the monk’s friends and comrades and—

He thought of Genji, of his dear beloved student greeting the familiar form in relief and welcome, a stranger wearing his face, of the betrayal Genji would feel, that they would all feel when things began to unfold. 

“No,” He denied, “I will not let you.”

“Fragile little toy,” Ra murmured, “You do not have a say. I will take you as I take all.”

Feeling the push of the God’s devouring AI begin to chew the edges of his code, ready to consume him, he reached for the Iris, six glimmering limbs of light shimmering into being.

“Try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a link to the amazing comic page by Lacertae! Beware of light spoilers, as there's a second image for later on!
> 
> [Lacertae's Art](https://66.media.tumblr.com/b9cd77db3d8454d66bbefa2d3029ebc5/2c414266756cb29b-f1/s1280x1920/121f9c52832836977775ebf80c55eed80c39a942.png)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second half of the mission. 
> 
> The stunningly stylistic piece done for this chapter was made by the talented SirKetz! The image is embedded in the chapter and a link to it will be available at the end!

Winston and Genji charged into the dark interior of the Vault, the scientist activating a headlamp to illuminate the wide corridor. Far down there was the flash of weapons fire, the sound of metal-on-metal, and the dull thuds of kinetic concussion.

Genji sprinted forward, running lights flaring green and sharp in the space, the treads on his carbon fiber feet making little sound. Behind him Winston grunted and leapt again, rocketing forward. 

“Pharah!” The gorilla called over comms as they closed the gap, “What did you mean that drones were coming out of stasis?”

_“Helix stowed combat drones in stasis here in case of human interference with the Vault, if anyone tried to break in and free Ra manually. They weren’t supposed to be accessible at all while in storage!”_ She shouted, the sound getting lost as they drew closer to the fighting. _“Be careful! Some of them are getting by—”_

“Is the door open?” Genji demanded, knowing he ought be more concerned with the God Program than with one single Omnic, but with desperation clawing at his guts he could think of nothing else. “Is Zenyatta alright?” 

There was no answer, only the sound of gunfire and a distorted murmur of shouting and another scattering of fire. 

“Master!” Genji tried, desperate, cuing up his own comm. “Master, are you there? Come in, _dammit!”_

“Zenyatta, can you hear us?” Winston tried, galloping along on his knuckles but they heard nothing.

“Where _is_ he?” Genji snarled, fear driving deep.

“Genji, eyes up, we’ve got incoming!” Winston warned. 

Movement in the shadows the hall and the ninja’s senses prickled, whipping out his wakizashi short blade and deflecting a sudden spray of bullets. 

“Security drones!” Winston warned, throwing downed the domed bubble shield, the hexagonal comb pattern flashing as it absorbed incoming shots. “They might be getting overrun!”

“Out of my way!” Genji snarled, shuriken ratcheting up and ready in his knuckles, and with a quick swing of his arm he let fly. The small, sharp projectiles embedded deeply, severing internal cables and damaging wires where they struck, two of the robots staggering before seizing up as their function spiraled. 

He dashed forward and struck with the short blade, slicing clean through a third, the sword shearing through the metal chassis like a hot knife through butter. Frustration built in him. These things were disposable. They weren’t any true army against invaders they were a roadblock slowing him down—

A high whine heralded the build on Winston’s Tesla Canon, a gaping arc of electricity cracking and popping discharged moments later, frying several more. “We’ve got more on the way!” 

“Where the hell is the Helix team?”Genji seethed and reached for his katana, charging toward the slow-moving sea of advancing Omnic drones, their function hollowed out, moving now at the whim of a God. The long blade swung in dire arcs, slicing through the drones easily, and Genji, built for this, _made_ for this, howled in defiance against the wakened might of the Vault. 

Every cut carved a chunk out of the mass of drones, his blade shimmering emerald scales as it swept cleanly through metal, baring sharp teeth as it bit through cable, wire, and alloy.

The fear ate him alive in those endless seconds. The fear of finding his Master, of dear Zenyatta, nine-point array burning red, no gentleness or love left in him, only the endless empty hunger of a God Program—

There was a sudden swooping _whoosh_ of air above them in the space and a flare of heat before a clump of the robotic swarm exploded, shrapnel scattering around them, buffeting Winston’s barrier. A raptora soldier dropped into the space the opened up, jump jets wide and discharging burn.

“Lieutenant Saleh!” Winston called to him, taking the brief reprieve and relief from gunfire to rearm the charge on the canon. “Where are the others?”

“Up ahead!” Saleh called, turning sharply to help them clear a path. “There are so many and they just keep pushing forward—” He panted, catching his breath. “We’re trying but it’s too many to catch all of them, Torbjörn better be ready for spill on the outside. Captain’s trying to get into the server room, but no luck yet.” 

Saleh signaled and as one they broke forward, racing to rejoin the Helix squad. “Something happened in there, we’re totally locked out. Electronic lock is dead and something’s got to be jamming the pneumatics further down the line. We wanted to jury-rig something together with our concussive charges but I doubt we’re getting through that door. There’s no time!”

Up ahead a flare of light and Pharah was touching down, letting the jump jets recharge, and in the bare illumination from their lights Genji could see a huge set of doors warped by rocket fire and singed with futility. 

“Pharah!” Winston called, leaping the rest of the way over to her, Tariq touching down as well moments later, his own jets burning a sharp yellow flame. “Status!”

“Fine here!” She replied, face hidden in that golden swoop of her helm. “No injuries but for a few bruises and burns, suits are all intact so far.”

“You just lost _Zenyatta!_” Genji all but snapped, sheathing his blades.

“We didn’t lose him, we know exactly where he is,” Saleh protested and Tariq hissed at him.

“Saleh! Not the time!” 

“Focus!” Pharah snapped, “More on the way!”

In the hall beyond more dull red eyes blinked through the gloom and both lieutenants fell into ready positions to ward them off with rocket fire. 

“What’s the next step?” Genji demanded, “What do we try now?”

“Could Torbjörn find a way into this room?” Pharah asked and the engineer chimed in over comms.

_“Not bloody likely without more specialized tools,”_ He said, voice tense. _“Helix is on its way with backup and equipment—supposedly! Damn slow, useless, bunch of—”_ His voice trailed off. _“Haven’t noticed anythin’ leavin’ through either the door or the network, but I can’t imagine this is for nothing. Don’t dally in there!”_

“What do you suggest?” Winston asked. 

_“Leave the monk in that closed room,”_ Torbjörn said and Genji bristled but the engineer continued before the ninja could really snap. _“And tell Shimada to calm down! I can feel it from here. He’s probably safer than you are in there and you’ve got an AI equipped with a God Program looking to take a sabbatical. Solve that first!”_

“He’s right,” Pharah said, shaking her head, firing off a shot down the hall. “Shutting down Ra has to take priority.” She nodded to Genji, “It might be our only way to unlock the room if Ra has control. And something Zenyatta said before we lost contact is bothering me. He said the Ra program was _missing_.”

_“Get to the other side of the main server room,”_ Torbjörn said, voice grave. _“Get to Ra’s sarcophagus. Check it’s intact. If we can’t find out what that damn Program has done you might have to just blow it.”_

“Blow it,” Pharah murmured. “Do you have a go from Helix on that?”

_“Ha! I don’t need their permission to know what might have’ta be done!”_ Torbjörn shouted. 

“Call it in anyway!” Pharah fired back, suddenly intense. “Even if you think it’s pointless do it anyway.” She turned to the others. “We’ve got to hurry. We don’t have much time.”

“Much time for what—?” Winston started.

“More are coming!” Tariq shouted, arming his rocket launcher and boosting back into the dead, still air of the Vault, raptora jets flaring. Along one of the far walls, paneling slid open and dozens more combat drones stepped out, the two lights on their face plating flickering green for a bare moment before lighting a still and unceasing red. 

“Just how many of these things were in storage?” Genji murmured, going again for his blades. Those red lights chilled him, calling to memories of footage from the crisis, stories the old soldiers of Overwatch would tell, of his own miserable time in Blackwatch, and he steeled himself against the tide of memory. Here and now, he can practically hear his Master chide fondly, focus on the present moment. 

The swarm drones open fired on them as soon as they started advancing, their weapons blasting hard light slugs meant to shatter, burn, and cut, and Pharah and Saleh were forced to shoot off into the air to avoid the incoming wave of fire. Tariq sent off three successive rockets, reducing several per shot to scrap and slag, but more kept emerging from the storage lining the walls.

“Torbjörn!” Winston shouted, dropping his dome again, the shield vibrating and shimmering as it absorbed incoming fire. “Status on Helix backup?”

_“Still not bloody here on time!”_ Torbjörn called back. _“I’ve sent an SOS to Overwatch HQ as well, but they’ll be even longer. Hang in there!”_ There was a barely muffled curse, _“I’m trying to find some way to take this damn building off the grid! Maybe I can shut down all the generators at once. Just keep things busy a while longer!”_

“How long is ‘a while?’” Winston asked helplessly, but his dome splintered, overtaxed and any reply would’ve been lost. “Genji! Get ready to move! Help the raptora team hold them off, I’ll work on getting to the sarcophagus! Maybe I can find a way to stem the tide from Ra there!” 

As the shield shattered, Genji struck out, dropping over the swathe of featureless, faceless drones, his blade swinging out, feeling the surge of power from his dragon as it rippled along carbon fiber and steel. 

He swung and struck like a storm of crackling green, his running lights flaring bright, burning through power, uncaring of how it might leave him drained later if he could not survive the next few minutes now. Not when the threat of Ra loomed and his Master was trapped in this terrible place. 

He heard more than saw the huge shape of the simian scientist as he leapt clear across the room in one bust of his jets, landing heavily before Ra’s sarcophagus itself. With a roar he tore the protective panel for the grim server housing clean off, exposing the access, snarling as shots of light left scoring down his flight suit. “Pharah! Cover me!”

“On it!” 

The raptora team scattered in the air above, controlling their altitude carefully, the inherent bob and weave of maneuvering the jets making them difficult to hit, a slight edge for a target suspended in the air so vulnerably. Rocket fire diffused the room, scattering and blasting drones, the Helix team trying to move around the waves of fire blinking up into the ceiling. 

Winston dropped his dome again, trying to buy precious seconds as his large fingers flew across the console access. “I need a little more time! There’s all kinds of safeguards on this thing!”

“Make it fast!” Genji warned, wakizashi whipping out, trying to deflect as much of the incoming shots, but it was hailing them from too many directions. His world narrowed, funneling down to basic inputs; light and danger and movement and survival. He moved quickly, dodging between the skeletal forms of the combat drones, slicing with his blades, severing limbs and wires and connections, burying his shuriken in dead red optics, in vulnerable gaps in their chassis and casings.

He felt the slugs of solid light crunching against his carbon fiber shell, scarring deep where they shattered like glass, where they found their mark from so many angles—he wasn’t fast enough, there were too many—

“Captain—!” Saleh’s panicked cry had Genji whipping around, wasting dangerous seconds, risking a narrowing of his awareness to find the cause of the cry and spotted Pharah, tossing the shattered remnants of her rocket launcher, littered with hard light fragments, the exoskeleton armor on her arm shattered and burned; his enhanced vision seeing the faint flickers of bright red blood. 

“Captain Amari is injured,” Tariq called. “We’ve got to back up! We can’t hold these things back anymore!”

“Just a bit longer!” Winston pleaded, and then shouted in victory, “I’m in! I’m—”

He cut off abruptly and Genji shouted for him, “Winston!” He leapt over a cluster of drones, blade sweeping aside incoming fire to land near him. “Winston, are you—?”

“Gone,” The scientist was staring down at the readings from the sarcophagus console with mute horror, eyes wide and mouth slack. “Ra isn’t in the sarcophagus. Ra’s gone! It’s out! It’s—”

“Get out of there!” Saleh called, the three of them dropping down on the other side of the huge space, pulling Pharah out of the way, the Helix captain cradling her bloodied arm, “We’ve got to pull back!”

“There’s nothing we can do!” Tariq shouted over comms. “If Ra’s gone it’s too late anyway!”

_“It has to still be there!”_ Torbjörn said. _“Nothing’s gotten out, I’d wager my firstborn on that! That damn thing is still in there somewhere! You’ve got to—Wait. Wait, what’s going on?”_

“Torbjörn! What’s happening?” Winston said, ducking behind the corner of Ra’s sarcophagus, trying to take cover from the advancing set of drones. “Genji, we’re going to jump for it, ready?”

“Ready!”

Winston leaped high as Genji dashed forward, the scientist impacting hard near the fore of the room, dropping that crucial bubble shield as Genji darted in.

_“Helix are setting off some kind of subroutine in the Vault. They’re—No. No, no, no, they can’t do that!”_

“Shit,” Pharah murmured quietly. 

“Come on, Lindholm! Talk to me!” Winston growled, his ire rising. 

_ “They’re shutting down the Vault! They’re sealing it off—!”_

Communication from Torbjörn cut off immediately like a severed line, not even static on his end, the connection wholly dead. In Genji’s head, the comm. network buzzed, empty where just a second ago there’d been an angry engineer. 

Down the corridor they’d entered from, the window of bright, white daylight, the light at the end of the tunnel, slid closed and disappeared as the door to the Vault sealed shut. 

They were trapped inside. 

“What’s going on! Torbjörn!” Winston demanded but there was no answer. 

“It’s protocol O-13,” Pharah said, arming the barrage payload from her jets, the last weapon she had at her disposal. “A last measure Helix set up to defend against escape by the God Programs.”

“You knew this could happen?” Genji growled.

She continued without marking his words, “The Vault is sealed off and an explosive charge is primed. It will take ten minutes for the chemical components to mix precisely and then the resulting reaction will create a fireball that should vaporize just about everything inside this place.”

“They’re leaving us for dead,” Genji realized, voice bereft of emotion. 

“We are soldiers,” Pharah said, leaning on the wall and cradling her wounded arm, exhaustion creeping into her voice, watching dully as splinters webbed their way over Winston’s failing shield. “Being asked to lay down our lives for a cause is in the job description, and statistically a few men and women are a small price to pay to keep one of these things down.”

Winston growled low, eyes closed, a burn on his temple ugly and raw and free of hair, pulling tight and splitting open as his brow furrowed. “What are we even doing here? If Helix was going to do this?”

“We really did want Overwatch to help secure a painless victory,” Pharah said, somber and apologetic and so very tired. “We don’t know what will happen when a God Program offlines. What the consequences will be. This was never a plan A, but it was always a plan.”

“What’s _our_ plan then,” Genji said, grim but unwilling to give up.

“Plan? There is no plan!” Tariq said, voice cracking slightly. “If Helix is implementing O-13 then they’ve given up in the success of anything else. That _is_ the plan!”

The shield cracked further under fire and Winston snarled, “The bubble’s about to fail. If we drop all the way back to the hatch maybe I can find some way to crack into the system and get it open. It’ll be a dead end, but more defensible anyway. We’ve still got _some_ weapons—”

“What about Master Zenyatta?” Genji protested, “He’s still locked in that room!”

The look Winston gave him was so full of genuine regret it made the ninja’s fists clench.

“Genji, I don’t even know if we can save ourselves,” He said honestly. “We can—”

“No.”

“Genji, we have to—”

“No!” He snarled, “I’m not leaving him!”

“Shield’s about to fail!” Saleh warned as the barrier went red.

“I will throw you over my shoulder if I have to,” Winston snarled, his anger coming to the fore, “But we _must—”_

The console by the control room blinked to life suddenly with a peppy chirp, flashing blue and then green, and the blast doors slid open suddenly as the bubble broke. 

Long metal eagle’s talons tapped staccato on the metal floor of the Vault as a single figure emerged, bright blue eyes gazing out from a white face, nemes crown glittering even in the dim light and throwing off red reflections from the lights of the drones. 

“Oh shit,” Saleh swore, hands grabbing for his launcher.

“That’s Ra,” Pharah whispered, open horror in her face. “Oh God, we really did fail.”

“The drones have stopped firing,” Tariq murmured, frozen in place as if the slightest movement would break the strange serenity of this single moment. The mass of combat drones had stilled, their red lights blinking intermittently, the weapons discharge ceasing as did their forward march. They waited, still. 

“How long till your shield is ready?” Pharah asked, voice low. It was a pointless question; they were as exhausted as their options, and even should Helix not be counting down to detonating this place, there was no possible way to contest the endless aggression of Ra, and the drones it held under sway.

Of all the times Genji had faced death from the moment his brothers sword has severed his spine, through every mission run for Blackwatch, and all the miserable lost wanderings thereafter, he did not think he had ever faced his own end with such certainty. He shifted with slow deliberation, shuriken slotting up in his knuckles—his reserves of the stored projectiles already more than half-spent. If this was to be their end, then as Master Zenyatta said—

_ Zenyatta._

Oh no. 

“The control room,” Genji whispered suddenly, panic a torrent in his blood, an expanding pressure in his chest. “Master!” 

“Genji don’t—!”

He was heedless to Winston’s shout, dashing out before the monolith of an Omnic God. That severe eagle’s head turned, predator’s eyes peering down on him over the wicked, hooked beak for a moment. The drones red optics flashed and glowed a steady red and Ra’s attention snapped back to the horde, the electronic eyes returning to that slow, standby blink. 

Beyond Ra, limp and lifeless on the cold floor of the control room, lay his Master’s body, faceplate canted toward the door, the nine-point array of lights dark and dead, orbs inert and scattered across the floor. 

An anguished sound tore from Genji’s throat and it fell like the bottom fell out of his world, _“Master!”_

He rushed in, heedless and deaf but for his pulse pounding in his ears, dropping down by Zenyatta’s dark and unmoving shell. “No, no, no,” he begged, voice breaking. “Master, no. Zenyatta!” 

He grabbed and pulled, lifting Zenyatta’s body up, metal scraping the floor as a limp arm dragged, holding the heavy, dead weight against his chest. “Master, please!” His hands searched, finding no weapon wounds like the one that killed Mondatta, finding no sign of assault or struggle. But finding the key command points hidden on the chassis did nothing, no sensor nor toggle woke him as if only asleep. 

In the frantic, crushing circle of Genji’s arms, Zenyatta lie dead. 

Genji’s head dropped to Zenyatta’s chest and cried out in grief. 

Outside, Pharah’s head dropped, hearing the open wound of a sound, “Oh no,” She whispered. “God, I led you to this.”

“We answered the call,” Winston said, voice wavering, watching the immovable bulk of the Omnic. “Even before we stepped inside, we all made the choice. Him especially.”

“Tariq!” Saleh hissed, “Will the feedback loop you used on Anubis work again?”

“Hell if I know,” Tariq said, the sweep of his visor blank shifting between the form of Ra and the mass of drones. “This is different. And even if we did, the Vault is still closed, and O-13 is still priming the charge to detonate.”

“We can’t take this all on,” Pharah whispered. “If I blow my barrage on Ra, you run for the door. See if Winston can get you two out to beat the detonator at least.”

“What?” Saleh sputtered just as Tariq said a vehement ‘No!’

“Why is it just waiting there?” Winston said suddenly, one large paw resting ready on his Tesla Canon. 

“No,” A voice came suddenly from the Ra Omnic, the tone low and raw and desperate, denial in its purest form, its voice warbling and unsteady, “Not control. Not like this.”

Saleh and Tariq’s weapons aimed in sync at the first words from the God, but Winston held out a hand in front of them. “Wait, something’s off about this—”

Blue Omnic energy coalesced around Ra like a sudden squall, debris from the shattered remains of the drones, shells and casings from rocket fire, debris that littered the floor after the unrelenting surge of battle, all lifting around, orbiting him, ships caught in a sinking whirlpool. 

“Not like this!” The God cried out and the energy released in a burst, a pulse of pure pressure pushing against their ears, the silence consuming. Before it, the amassed drones shattered as the wave of energy crashed on them, shredding limbs and crumbling chasses, causing the foundations of the room to rumble.

Before them Ra hung suspended, feet touching off the ground, hands outstretched, debris surrounding him like swirl of an atom. 

That eagle’s head swung towards them again, blue eyes watching. Saleh and Tariq kept their weapons trained on target with steady hands.

“Use the barrage payloads you have on the sarcophagus,” Ra said, a strange urgency in its voice. “That is where the detonation charge is priming. If done early the blast will be diminished. You must do it _now.”_

“No thanks,” Pharah said, “I’d much rather use it on you.”

“It is in my power to protect you,” The God insisted, its blue eyes lit now from within with that Omnic Blue, darting around, to Genji, the Sarcophagus, back to Pharah. 

“Right,” She said, the raptora’s wings opened, the warheads instead gleaming under the blue glow, “Out of the goodness of your heart I suppose?”

Ra’s gaze held steady on her, “There is not time enough to argue. You learned once that your team was worth protecting, that an alternative opportunity was worth pursuing for their safety.”

The Helix captain stiffened, sucking in a sharp breath of surprise through her nose. Behind her, Tariq and Saleh exchanged a significant look.

The former dared ask, “Captain?”

Pharah was still for one endless second and then nodded jerkily. “Okay. For my team.”

“Captain?” Saleh this time.

“Arm your barrages,” She ordered, both of them snapping to attention automatically. “We’ll blow the thing.” The gold arc of her helmet swung around to Ra, “God help you if you’re lying to me.”

Ra nodded, once, “Hurry. Now,” and the raptora team lifted off, shooting into the still-smoking air of the Vault, scented with electric burn and ozone. Winston hurried over, looking into the control room where Genji slumped, still holding the body of his Master.

“Genji…” He whispered, head bowing over them. 

“I don’t care what they do,” Genji whispered. “Let that Program try and save them. It already took the one thing in this world that mattered.” His gaze, the green line of his visor casting sickly highlights over the dead metal shell. “Even if it does, its life is _mine._”

“Barrage armed!” Saleh called, tearing Winston’s attention back to the room beyond where Ra still floated, perfectly still. 

“Barrage armed!” Tariq echoed a bare second later. 

“On my go, we fire!” Pharah called, and swore softly, “God _damn_ I hope this works—One! Two! Three! _Fire—!_”

The missiles screamed as the erupted from their housing in the raptora suits, smoke streaming off the three Helix soldiers, throwing everything they had toward the form of the Sarcophagus, standing empty at the front of the room. 

The huge server rippled with the force of it and bloomed suddenly, the chemical charge within detonating prematurely in an unfolding fireball growing out of control.

Ra’s whole body seemed to arc, arms flying out and—

“Oh God,” Winston whispered, “It’s beautiful.”

Genji could but look on as before them, in the room, Ra achieved an effortless Transcendence, six glittering golden limbs spreading out, as if they could hold all the world at bay. Like the birth of a sun, golden light shimmered out, bathing everything in _light._

At the center, Ra shone with empyrean splendor.

As the golden radiance buffeted over him, Genji trembled, tears splashing the inside of his visor. 

Before them, the burst of fire washed the room, swirling around the raptora soldiers harmlessly, breaking over their bodies and leaving no burn behind. It built and swirled, storming around Ra and even into the control room, and there was no heat to it, only that gentle warmth.

In perhaps seconds, the sudden explosion burned itself out as quickly as it was triggered, the sarcophagus a smoldering husk of charred circuit board and twisted metal, gutted by fire. 

The light faded, the ethereal arms relaxing and finally fading from sight, and Ra—

No, _not_ Ra.

—touched down, claws scraping against the floor.

Before them in the room the raptora soldiers dropped like bricks, their landings all staggered, the three barely managing to stay on their feet. Three golden visors staring back toward the God—

Not a God, it couldn’t be.

—at the fore of the room. 

Ra—not Ra, _who are you_—turned as well, head canting to the side, looking past Winston and fixing on Genji. The stately eagle’s head nodded once to Winston and the Omnic stepped forward with measured paces until he stood before Genji’s slumped form. 

The cybernetic soldier still held his Master’s body—still dead, still dark—unwilling to let go, kneeling and slumped in defeat, there on the floor. 

Slowly, the God knelt before him, seven towering feet folding down to something nearly eye-to eye. A green visor stared openly, disbelieving, at intent blue eyes. 

Then the God brought his hands to his head, fingers spread like antlers, and wiggled, playful. 

Genji thought he might have sobbed and asked, impossible though it was, “Master?”

“Genji,” The God said, that voice deeper, almost endless, and yet the warmth it held was so familiar, the sun after a gray storm. “Is there any chance you can still have faith in me, my dear student?”

He was shaking, he could feel it rattling his carbon fiber body, and slowly Genji set down the beloved chassis of his Master—empty now, empty but not dead—hand cupping that familiar golden jaw once, just once, before surging forward and embracing this strange face worn over his Master’s soul as tightly as he could. 

“Genji,” Zenyatta—for whatever had happened to him it truly was Zenyatta—murmured, and held him just as close. “My dear, Oh my _dearest_, I am so sorry.”

“How?” Genji breathed, unable to articulate better than that, and utterly unwilling to remove his hands yet, to stop touching lest this miracle turn to smoke and nothingness before him. His fingers touched everywhere; the sweep of the headdress, the crest of the beak, the glittering band on an arm. _“How?”_

“I second that,” Winston interrupted, looking the Ra body over with open astonishment. “It’s really you then, Zenyatta?” 

Behind him in the doorway Saleh and Tariq watched with slack jaws and Pharah had a hand over her mouth, but the tracks of tears cut a clear path through the stain of smoke and dust on her skin. 

The eagle’s head looked down as he held one hand up, long fingers slowly curling and flexing, feeling the function of his new form. “As much as anyone can be said to be the body that a soul inhabits.”

“But _how—_”

“The Ra Program is malicious and self-perpetuating above all else, and can copy itself to even the basest of functioning systems, which is must have been why quarantine was deemed safer than attempted destruction,” Zenyatta said. “But the Ra AI specifically is different; when it attempted to consume me, and I reached for the Iris, the AI and Program both found me invulnerable from harm. The Program calculated I was a superior AI and networked permanently to me, and the Ra AI was consumed instead.”

“Permanently,” Genji repeated, closing his eyes as more tears of his own spilled where no one could see them beneath his mask. He thought for one moment bright with grief, of the shine of chrome in the Himalayan sun, the familiar slant of the eyes of that dearly familiar faceplate, and those beautiful nine points of blue. 

“What do we do with—” Winston cut off, his eyes darting to the body the where the Zenyatta AI had dwelt previously. 

Zenyatta was quiet for a moment, looking down at it as well. “If you can, send it to the temple. Let it be entombed next to Mondatta’s empty chassis, and those of my brothers and sisters that are also now gone. Let it rest.” The hand he still held suspended tightening into a fist briefly, then loosening and he waved once toward the still body. Together, the orbs he carried with him always lit up flashing gold, violet, gold, and then finally a steady blue, floating up to their familiar position, turning gently around his shoulders. 

Winston nodded firmly, “I swear we will.” Then he blinked, and realized the more important piece of the conversation “Wait,” he said, “You’re housing the Ra Program.”

Zenyatta nodded, solemn, one hand still resting on Genji’s shoulder, the other flexing idly. “I am. It is quiescent for now. I am in control. But I cannot remain here. If there is danger to it again, it may fight that control.”

“We’ll get you out of here,” Genji said, fierce with conviction. He was not going to fail twice.

“I guess we go look at the door,” Winston said. “I’m not really sure how we’re—” 

_“—llo? Hello? Goddamn it, come in you shit boots! Answer the damn comms! I swear to God I’m going to—”_

“Wait is that, Torbjörn?” Winston sputtered as their comms connected again, static crackling over the connection, but holding steady.

_>“Oh thank God, you’re alive,”_ The relief in the engineer’s voice was endless. _“I’ve been tryin’ to get in the door an’ saw smoke leakin’ out of the damn Vault and I… God I was scared to death you’d all just…”_

“We’re all fine here,” Winston said, but his eyes never left Zenyatta. “There’s been… a bit of a development.”

_“I frankly don’t care what wrench you’re about to throw at me,”_ Torbjörn said emphatically, _“I’m just so damn glad to hear you all alive.”_

“Well you say that now. Is Helix there?” 

_“Nearly, I think. Or soon at least. I swear they’re late on purpose—”_

“Can you get the door open before they get here?” Winston continued to eye Zenyatta, pristine in the strange new form. “I think we need a bit of a window without observation. There’s something we’ve got to try and smuggle out…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is a link to SirKetz wonderful illustration!
> 
> [SirKetz Tumblr](https://sirketz.tumblr.com/post/189157750620/this-is-my-piece-for-the-genyatta-big-bang-check)   



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a few more chapters to go now. No art this chapter, but we'll double up some goodness next chapter!

It was amazing how many people could _actually_ fit in the newly-refurbished Watchpoint: Gibraltar media room. There were dozens of screens meant to monitor many channels at once, and only a few agents could monitor any developing global situation through its broadcasts. The main screen was tuned into the BBC and all of the senior staff of Overwatch—at least those currently in Europe—were crammed in, along with a few fresher faces. 

Winston was at the front of the room, face only about a foot from the screen, Tracer pressed against his side, trying to get as close to viewing the center of it as she could without outright climbing over him. Somewhere behind them were co-commanders Morrison and Amari. McCree had tumbled in sometime last night and looked one half-drunk and the other half asleep, but trundled into the room with the rest of them nonetheless. 

Reinhardt was at the very back out of necessity, and Torbjörn was standing on the light table at the center of the room. Brigitte was with him, craning her neck to see over Winston. They’d even brought Torbjörn’s pet Bastion unit—the quirky robot a well-kept secret rarely let out of the armory or the training gallery—in to view as well because Torbjörn insisted he’d rather it just watch for itself than trying to explain things.

Zenyatta had enjoyed talking to the war Omnic, Genji reflected sadly.

In addition to the usual senior Overwatch members there were three very recent additions.

Their contracts immediately terminated by Helix after the incident in the Ra Vault, Fareeha, Saleh, and Tariq were the organization’s three newest operatives, hired immediately. Torbjörn had called it a hell of an interview, and Fareeha had been more grateful to keep her team together than to finally get her chance with the Overwatch organization.

Genji himself leaned against the wall closer to the back of a room, watching quietly. At his feet was a standard Overwatch issue duffel, barely half full.

The main screen covered the eastern wall and was progressing through the broadcast of on the International News stations. 

“Time to see what the damage is,” Torbjörn murmured.

Genji knew what he meant, but the damage was so much worse than anything that would ever be reported over the news. 

_“—Latest news on the disruption at the Ra Vault outside the city of Cairo. Helix Securities has been silent on the issue and have still neglected to give a statement, but in a breaking story, sources have indicated that HSI had detonated an undisclosed explosive within the Vault, something that, if gone awry, could’ve posed considerable danger to the city so close by. The UN is conducting a full investigation of Helix, as they have oversight of the Security Organization, and are fully cooperating with Egyptian authorities. So far findings are inconclusive. Fortunately, operatives of the newly-reinstated Overwatch organization, which were assisting Helix in their containment of the God Program, were able to persevere in spite of this disastrous oversight.”_

The room leaned forward collectively, breath held.

_“According to the latest reports, Overwatch was able to maintain quarantine and moreover, destroy the God Program quarantined in the Vault even with Helix’s interference. Responsible for the initial lockdown of the God Programs after the First Omnic Crisis, it’s good to see the organization still fully-capable of handling things. As one of their agents said in a recent interview about the upcoming UN hearing, ‘the world could always use more heroes’ and I find I agree.” _

“Yes!” Cheers went up through the room, equal only to the gusty sighs of relief, Tracer pumping her fist in well-deserved victory. 

Winston nodded, “This should go a long way to losing any suspicion.”

“Hell yeah!” Saleh bounced in his seat, “Whoever set them the story about the explosives sure did us a favor, right Tariq?” He elbowed his teammate.

Tariq cleared his throat, “Oh absolutely. No idea who could’ve done that. None.” 

Fareeha sighed, “Calm down you two.” She rubbed her arm a little absently in its sling. 

“It is pretty exciting,” Tariq gave a token protest. 

“Hell yeah it is, this is the first time I’ve ever gone right from one job into another,” Saleh said and got an elbow jab of his own for it.

“Winston,” Morrison said, stepping in, “Have Athena continue to monitor things, see what other broadcasts cover this. We don’t want it spinning out of control.”

“Helix will try and bury it,” Ana said, single eye still watching the screen shrewdly, though the news had moved on. “And the UN will do everything they can to make it clear Helix were acting outside their control in this. Both of which can only help us as well. As far as anyone else will be concerned, a God Program died that day.”

Genji’s mouth pressed a grim line, then he reached down and grabbed the bag and slipped from the room as they continued to discuss. He thought he’d managed to exit unnoticed, but halfway down the hall a voice called him, and he turned to find Fareeha trotting toward him. 

She still looked tired, though it had been days since their return from Cairo and the Vault, but she seemed settled and calm, her hair in a messy tail and dressed in relaxed crew shirt and sweatpants, all in Overwatch’s slate gray with the orange stripe. She carried herself just as proudly as she had in the gleaming raptora blue.

Genji nodded to her arm still resting in the sling, a silvery swathe of healed skin over the wound she’d sustained in the Vault. Though Zenyatta’s transcendence had healed it, Genji knew from experience that wounds closed so fast by the light that sloughed off the Iris could be tender for a time yet. “It’s still bothering you?”

She quirked a smile, a bit wry, “A bit, but more because mom’s insisting.” Genji nodded, not entirely certain what to say, but she continued, gesturing with her free hand to his bag. “You’re leaving.”

He nodded, “I am.”

She found her own answers even in his lack of elaboration, “You’re going to him. You know where he’s gone, don’t you?”

He frowned beneath his mask and shifted, a touch restless, “Not for sure. There was no time for us to coordinate, trying to get him away, but all the same… I know where Tekhartha Zenyatta would go. Ra though…”

“He’s not Ra though,” Fareeha said, cutting easily to the heart, her smile soft. Less the stoic former captain of Helix in this moment, and again the hopeful young woman who dreamed of Overwatch. “Not really. The body and the program remain, but not the mind. Even I saw that. The Ra Program may have linked with him, but won’t the substance still be the same Zenyatta? The same soul?”

Genji bowed his head a touch, her words easily summing up his own feelings and concerns and hopes. He also knew how deliberate her word choice is, considering the Shambali’s bold claim to their souls. 

“True self is without form,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Master Zenyatta used to say that, in the early days when he was teaching me, helping me overcome the struggles that still plagued my heart over my cybernetic body. That I was still the same person, even though my body had changed, my shell. That inside I was still Genji Shimada, and that no amount of cybernetics was going to change that.” He bowed his head a bit, “As long as Zenyatta’s soul is still there, that’s all that matters.”

Something in Fareeha’s expression cleared, some lingering doubt that Genji must have dispelled without trying. “It’s not an obligation to you, is it? It’s love,” Her voice was soft, almost reverent. “You love him. That’s why you’re going to find him.”

Long beyond denying it now, Genji nodded, “As long as Master Zenyatta lives, even in this strange way, I will be nowhere else than by his side.”

What he didn’t say were his own lurking doubts. Linked together now with a God Program, how at risk was Master Zenyatta of changing into something that was no longer recognizable. And how much control over the aggressive program did he have?

\--

It was never an easy thing, traveling to rural Nepal, and he was slowed several times over by issues with customs and a flight delayed by weather. Then sluggish progress on the rail system until that could take him no further, and finally the remaining trip by bus or by cart. When everything lined up he’d made the journey before in a week, but this time it took him near ten days. 

Long enough that even he was exhausted by the incessant, rough travel, but it was all worth it for that first glimpse of the monastery, even from the bottom of the mountain with a difficult climb ahead. 

He never really considered himself a person that suffered from homesickness, at least not until he returned to the temple, and felt some piece of him relax inside. God, he loved this place. Endless silence, freezing temperatures, and an unfailing sense of mental quietude and peace matched nowhere else.

Still, for all that the mountains were a quiet place, as he finally crested up the switchback trail and made his way through the looming statuary of the approach, he had the sense that things might be too quiet. By now he should have been spotted and greeted by monks, or seen a class out on one of the terraces, or heard the great bells and chanting of a meditation session. But the temple was as still as the air. 

He hoped that they were just at the shrine today in large number—he’d bypassed it on the more direct path up the mountain—and relaxed when he spotted a lone figure stepping out to meet him, an old familiar face. 

“Kaiyatta,” he calls in greeting, trotting over, recognizing her three-point array on her copper-colored faceplate and the particularly untidy way she always tied her kasaya. She had been a Shambali student as well when he’d been here last, though he faintly remembers Zenyatta mentioning that she’d since been initiated as a full monk. 

She straightened when she caught sight of him, and bowed in polite greeting, “You did come.”

Genji’s heart kicked up in response, “He’s here?”

She gently reached out and squeezed his arm, “Of course he is.”

\--

She didn’t take him to see Zenyatta immediately and Genji did not ask to be. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see his Master—he did, _desperately_—but in the full two weeks since the Vault, he had nothing but questions and doubts and wonders and worries to sift through in his head, more every day. He still did not know why Zenyatta left. 

He wanted to know more about what’s happened since his Master had come here. More about who he was now, who he may have become. It felt a little like when they met all over again. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. 

“He arrived a little more than a week ago,” Kaiyatta told him, offering him a steaming mug of tea. The Omnics couldn’t drink it, but Genji was not the first human to visit and stay within this temple’s walls during the Shambali’s tenure there. He accepted it, but did not actually remove his mask to partake. “The new chassis was a surprise of course—I had not thought to imagine him with a beak, you know—but he was still Master Zenyatta, so we welcomed him home.”

“And he was fine? Did he,” Genji hesitated here, “Did he tell you what transpired, to bring him back? Did you see his old body?”

Kaiyatta nodded, “Of course. It arrived after he did, but Zenyatta’s old chassis is now entombed next to Mondatta’s, down below the temple. It rests with the other empty vessels the Shambali have left behind to join the Iris. Though Zenyatta is with us still, it was an honor we were glad to afford it. He has been entirely forthcoming and honest about the circumstances that led to his return.”

“It didn’t worry you?” Genji couldn’t help but ask.

“We were worried _for_ him,” Kaiyatta said easily. “Though he seemed unchanged by the ordeal when he arrived, there was a sort of… hesitancy to him. A strangeness that only seemed to increase as the days passed here. Finally he went into seclusion and he has not been seen in several days.”

“Strange? Strange how?” He asked, “Was he dangerous? Aggressive?”

She shook her head no, and Genji felt momentarily shamed to be asking such a thing about _Zenyatta_, but he remembered what God programs were like. He’d be remembering the Ra Vault in his bleakest moments for years yet. A little shame was worth being sure. 

“No, not aggressive,” Kaiyatta took another moment to consider. “He seemed tense, perhaps. Worried. There was a strain to him that there had never been before.” A marked thing indeed for someone as steady and serene as Zenyatta. “I will admit I was worried that his AI might not be able to handle the processes of the Program tied to him. I can only imagine that such a thing must be taxing. Perhaps _exhausting_ is a word that can be applied, though it would certainly not be an organic feeling made better by rest.”

Genji went cold at this. Zenyatta had seemed so steady after the Vault, even networked to the Ra program like he was. Could pressure have been building? The weeks since Cairo, could it have been eating him alive from the inside? Hollowing out his willpower to resist and maintain control? Could this Program overwrite him from within? Shape him still?

“Where are the other monks?” He asked slowly, dreading the answer, realizing very suddenly that he may be far, far too late. 

“They are at the shrine,” Kaiyatta replied and Genji felt such intense sweeping relief with those few words he was nearly sick with it, stomach churning and head light, before her next words put the lead back in his belly. “Three days ago Zenyatta broadcast a command for us to vacate the temple.”

“Command,” He repeated the word. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly as I said. An imperative order and a certain compulsion to obey.”

The idea of it had Genji reeling, “You could not refuse? Could it be ignored?” The idea of Zenyatta doing anything to subvert another’s free will was nearly unthinkable. It was something that Genji would’ve thought was so outside the realm of possibility it was not worth the time spent considering it. But these were strange days, and he was not sure what was becoming of Zenyatta at all. 

“I am not entirely sure,” Kaiyatta admitted. “None tried to know for certain. I would say it was much the same as receiving an order from a commanding officer. Perhaps there is always the option of disobedience, but it is not what is understood to follow.” There was a moment and her array blinked a few times, running a diagnostic. “Yes, I believe I could have acted otherwise, but I had no wish to. I do not believe he meant us harm by it.”

Genji frowned beneath his mask, “Kaiyatta, you said the monks had all been ordered out of the temple, that they’ve been down in the shrine. If everyone was ordered out then what are you still doing here?”

“My orders were different. I was here to intercept you, Genji.”

“To take me to him?”

“No. I am here to stop you from reaching him.”

He say up straight, startled by the answer, “What? Why?”

Kaiyatta considered this, “I do not know precisely. I was given an order, not a reason. But if I had to offer an assumption it would be that Master Zenyatta thought you would arrive here seeking him, and be difficult to deter. So I was to meet you and keep you away.”

He settled slowly, but remained tense, fighting the urge to lay a hand on his blade. This was a monk, he reminded himself, a friend, and once a fellow student. “If I were to try anyway, how would you intend to stop me?” 

This was a test, Genji knew. Not Zenyatta testing him, but rather her answer would be testament to just how far his beloved master had drifted. 

Kaiyatta considered again, “I do not know that either. But… I do not wish to fight you, Genji. When you first arrived here, years ago, you frightened me.” Her fingers tapped together in a show of nervousness. “While I learned that you are a good man, I would be frightened still to try and stand against you in violence. I sincerely do not wish to do so.”

This, finally, let Genji relax and he chuckled softly, remembering how she’d scurry away from him in the early days of his learning here. But also because Kaiyatta, though determined, did not seem lost to this. She wasn’t controlled, or manipulated, and remained herself. A pure Omnic blue array. 

“I would also prefer it if you did not seek out Zenyatta and the Ra program,” She continued. “Of my own preference.”

“Why is that?” He asked, shifting positions, finger tracing the lip of his mug of tea idly. 

“Because I have grown to have a great regard for you, Genji. Perhaps you do not consider yourself a Shambali monk, but I would say you are one of the great figures of our order, and I know many of the other monks would consider you thusly as well. I have come to look up to you, and I do not want to see you hurt. If something may truly be wrong with Master Zenyatta,” She shook her head, “I do not want to see _anyone_ hurt.”

Genji had never considered himself one of the Shambali, and her answer left him stunned, mouth hanging open rudely beneath his mask. Though, with all the time and effort he spent here, he could understand how he would have been remembered by the other monks practicing at the temple. That though he may not be a monk of the faith, he was perhaps one of their greatest successes. 

He leaned forward and laid a hand on her shoulder, “I have to go to him.”

She nodded, resigned and unsurprised. “I had thought it might be inevitable, even with my paltry interference. You loved him more than any of us, in a way that stretched further than any of our bonds with a teacher. And he,” Her voice softened, “He loved you enough that when you no longer needed him, he gladly followed where you led.”

Moments of true epiphany were rare in life, Genji knew, but this blossomed through him, his heart kicking up and his whole world tilting on its axis. He had set his life by Zenyatta’s guiding star, but had not realized, had not thought that his Master might have done the same. When Genji had made his peace with his cybernetic shell, and when he’d felt ready to face everything he’d left unfinished in the great world, Zenyatta had left the only true home he’d ever known to accompany him. To remain by his side. 

Zenyatta’s words, there in the tense hours before leaving for Cairo, how Zenyatta had spoken to him that he was willing to put his life on the line, to die, when he returned with Genji to Overwatch for its reformation. 

He did not go back because he was willing to lay his life down for Overwatch—Genji felt as his heart could not beat faster—he had done it because he was willing to do so for _Genji_. 

“Oh,” Genji whispered, “Oh, I think I’ve been such a fool.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Genji, you dummy. God, I am so happy we're beyond the chapters that were half in italics. The html tags were a bitch. 
> 
> Okay, next chapter, who wants just... entirely too much pornography? Anyone? Anyone?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Genji finds Zenyatta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is by far the longest chapter at a truly beefy 7k words. 6k of them are porn. I genuinely think there might be too much. But there are a couple different flavors.
> 
> There are two incredible illustrations in this chapter! An e-for-everyone comic page by Lacertae and a NSFW image by Tascha. Both are stunning, but be warned if you're in a public place!

Kaiyatta departed for the shrine then, to join her brothers and sisters, and Genji gathered himself and headed down into the sub-levels of the temple, carved right into the stone of the mountain itself. 

Little of the temple’s power went into managing the sub levels, and there were bare lights running through the halls, casting stark shadows as he passed, smelling of dust and cold. There was little heating either, as the only thing kept deeper down was storage, and the chassis of Omnics that were permanently offline, and had ceased to function. The land was too difficult to attempt to bury any significant number them, the most stable ground occupied by the village, the shrine, and the temple, and while an Omnic was easier to disassemble than a human body, the griffon vultures and lammergeiers that occasionally cruised the winds had little interest in alloy. Sky burials were out as well. 

So they remained entombed deeper down. An enduring reminder that all things joined the Iris one day. 

Genji could count on one hand with fingers left over how many times he’d ventured down himself. 

He kept his blade close, remembering the corridors of the Vault, the red lights in the dark. He didn’t know how this would play out, not even all the ways it could. He didn’t know how it might go right, how it might go wrong. He knew how to deal with Zenyatta, knew it as well as he knew himself, and even knew, to some limited, struggling extent, how to deal with a God Program. But this mixture of two polar opposites gave him no idea on what to count on. 

Zenyatta told him once, in Genji’s earlier days here, to give people the chance to surprise him, to be better than he expected. 

He would give Zenyatta this chance—many chances, if he’s being honest, he’d try until he had nothing left to give to this—and hope that all went well, or that he somehow found the strength to do what Zenyatta would wish to be done. 

Many of the chambers and rooms there in the depths of the temple were unoccupied; the losses the Shambali order sustained were few but staggering, and the only other thing occasionally kept was general storage. It meant that there were a great deal of dark spaces and empty rooms to check, and often the green flare of Genji’s running lights was the only light that cast about a chamber. 

He heard the chime of the orbs before he ever saw him, that strange, bell-like tone that rang all the louder for the silence. He paused, hearing it, the music of it calling back to the countless hours he’d spent meditating with his Master. He listened, unmoving for a moment and just taking it in, before following unerringly to the source. 

At the back of an empty room, dark but for a single light and the gold-blue-violet glow of the orbs, on a rug woven of yak fur, Genji found him, seated in a lotus. 

But something wasn’t quite right. He could immediately tell the Omnic was not meditating, though he was clearly trying to do so. Rather, he could not seem to achieve a state of tranquility. Zenyatta’s posture was sloppy, the great eagles head bowed forward, almost defeated, and there was a strange, restless tension that Genji had never seen in any Omnic, as though his Master could not quite seem to hold still. The fingers ticked gently, and one of the great clawed toes tapped out a mute rhythm against the air. Frustration seemed writ into ever line of his body, every inch of bronzy metal. 

It worried him, and broke his heart to see Zenyatta struggling so. 

“Master,” he greeted softly. 

“Genji,” the Omnic responded, and though the cyborg could hear the echoes of that familiar voice still in the sound, it was so much more now, somehow. Deeper, more tonal. “You should not have come.”

“You knew I would,” Genji asserted, not incorrectly, and watched as Zenyatta—or maybe Ra—tremored faintly, head bobbing once in acknowledgement. 

“I did. I dearly hoped you would not, but I know you well, Genji. Still,” The head lifted and eyes, blue and piercing, locked onto him, “You should not be here. It is not safe now to be so close.”

“What do you mean?” Genji said, gaze briefly measuring the distance between them before latching back onto his Master. 

“I am having… difficulty, controlling Ra’s functions,” Zenyatta said slowly, as if having trouble finding the right words, or, more frighteningly, as if his processing power was being spent elsewhere. “The Program’s imperatives and directives, it’s… _desires_.”

“It’s desires?” Genji questioned carefully, and dared inch closer, slow movements eating up bare centimeters at a time. 

But Zenyatta just groaned, the noise pure frustration and his head canted forward again, the swoop of that sharp beak dropping, hands clenching to fists. “You must leave.”

Genji frowned and squared his shoulders, unwilling to even consider it. “I’m not going to leave you here.”

Blue Omnic energy surged and five orbs of pure destructive force coalesced above Zenyatta’s head, and released, pummeling the wall behind Genji—missing him be millimeters that the cyborg knew must be intentional—and leaving behind a crackling residue as the power dissipated into the air. “Leave!” Zenyatta roared, voice quaking slightly, “Now!”

“No,” Genji denied softly, and crept forward again. “Remember what we spoke of? Before the Vault?” Slowly he approached until he could finally kneel before the massive, trembling form. “Remember how I said I was not afraid because I doubted you? It is no less true now. I do not doubt you, Master. Not even like this. You are _stronger_ than this!”

“Genji,” Zenyatta called his name softly, the bare little plea making his heart ache but he did not dare stop talking.

“I am frightened again, frightened still. But it is not because I doubt you. Never that.” He dared then, lifting his hand, questing fingers just inches away from brushing against the hooked beak. “I am scared because I _love_ you, Master, and I am frightened for you.”

Zenyatta let out a horrible sound, an angry, anguished howl and metal grinding on metal, a wail of mechanical agony. Between instants Genji was flat on his back, knocked to the ground with such force it drove the wind even from his regulated, cyberized lungs and he struggled and gasped.

Above him, the half-God draped across him, but holding himself away. Orbs orbited them above, pulsing steadily violet with discord. Metal fingers scraped the floor gouging marks in the ancient stone next to Genji’s head. That great metal body shuddered again, but held still, struggling even for that. “You do not understand. I cannot hold it back. This need to eat, to overtake, to control, to brand my mind over others, to _replicate—_”

Genji felt then the overwhelming tidal wave of the aggressive program, latching onto even his own limited connectivity, like a live sparking wire at the edges of what of him that remained human. “Master, stop!” He wished desperately he’d thought to have Torbjörn check even his simple firewalls before he left, knowing he cannot possibly compete against Ra, his hand closing on the hilt of his shortblade, braced himself, and— 

Nothing. 

Nothing happened. 

He felt Ra crash against his edges, the danger of it like serrated sharks teeth in crushing jaws, dulled to merely the abrasive rasp of sandpaper against his awareness. Ra—_Zenyatta_ battered against him, pressed intimately together, their bodies aligned and networked, and he arched a bit, dizzy with the realization that flooded him all at once.

“You can’t,” Genji breathed. “You can’t take control of me, you can’t hurt me.” He grinned, nearly manic as the idea of it, the _certainty_ rooted in his mind, “You can’t hurt me, Zenyatta, I’m too damn _human_ for you.”

“Genji,” Zenyatta said his name again, this time like it was a prayer, hopeful and wanting, and that hooked beak brushed against the sweep of his mask. Without a second thought Genji reached up and detached his visor, tossing it carelessly where the sound of it tumbling across the floor echoed loudly through the room. 

He didn’t care. He grinned, fierce and focused up at the Omnic over him, “Go on, Master. Whatever you need, let go. Write your name on every inch of me, brand me, _I’m yours_, you can’t hurt me.” 

Zenyatta fell into him—a lost ship desperate for port in a storm and a starving soul falling on a feast—seven feet of Omnic demigod trying to burrow into him. To physically slot himself against every milimeter of the cyborg, across the network connection Ra had initiated, linked and unwilling to disconnect. 

“Yes, closer, touch me—“ Genji caught him, arms around his Master and clutching the larger body close, spreading his legs for Zenyatta to slot between them like be belonged there. They both gasped as his Master pressed tightly, the full weight of that huge, breathtaking body coming down on him. Beneath that ivory and gold drape about his waist Genji felt a hardness, saw it tent the fabric obscenely, and his mouth went dry, a bitten off sound of _need_ ricocheting around his throat. 

The Ra chassis was anatomically complete, and he could feel every imposing inch of male interest pressing along his pelvis, and his mouth watered for it. Heat flushed his system, limbs light and trembling with the sudden, intense force of want that suffused him, and he rocked up against that hardness, rocked against Zenyatta, something that he had only ever dreamed of before, a pink haze settling over his mind. “Master,” He panted softly, “Oh, Zenyatta, _please_.”

It had been so long since Genji had enjoyed physical company of any kind, had not since he was fully flesh and blood, all those long years ago. After he met Zenyatta, fell headlong into a love he’d never wavered from, he had realized he didn’t want to spend his life with anyone else. But he remembered it, oh how he remembered it. He remembered what it was like, taking pleasure with another, suffused with heat and desire, losing himself in it. 

He’d dreamed of what it could be like to share such closeness, such intimacy with Zenyatta. Dreamed and fantasized and wondered and _wanted_. Dreamed of soft touches and hard edges, smooth metal and rough gasps, and a slow lovemaking, sharing it with a warm, constant presence. 

The Ra chassis pinned him hard to the stone floor, powerful metal thighs pressing up, forcing Genji’s legs up into the air, exposing him easily, holding him wide open. One large hand held the both of his wrists to down, immobile, the other hand gripping one of his thighs, pressing deeply against the meat of him and _rocked_ against him like a crashing wave. “Genji,” Zenyatta growled at him, voice gravelly with desperation, feeling so _much— _

The cloth rode up, exposing the hardness of Zenyatta’s Omnic cock—a durable plastic core, sheathed in soft, textured silicone, warmed through and run with microsensors, designed to communicate something so akin to organic feeling—dragged against the rigid plating on Genji’s belly. The cyborg arched, moaning, trying to drive into it, press closer, wanting to rub up against Zenyatta’s cock like a cat begging for cream. “Yes, Master, just like that,” He panted, face hot, “Let me—”

But Genji was held fast and Zenyatta fucked against him, slow and rough, fucking his synthetic cock along his student with hard, steady strokes that shook Genji’s body with each movement. Ratcheting him back and forth across the floor like a blade across a whetstone, sharpening his desire with each pass and left him gasping for it. “Genji,” His master chanted his name, as if it were all that were anchoring him to sanity, “Genji, Genji, oh _Genji_! I never knew—”

Genji moaned helplessly, and lifted his head to kiss and pant along the beak and pale faceplate, “Master, Oh Zenyatta, I wish could give you everything, give you lips, and teeth, and tongue, make you whine and beg—”

Half-keen, half-roar the Omnic pressed him down harder, releasing his hands and pushing one of Genji’s long legs back toward his chest, Zenyatta’s cock jutting proudly through the gap in his student’s thighs, “Yes, Genji, my dear, my _love_, please I—” That deep voice groaned, overcome, “Want to feel you as well, please, let me—”

Desperate, hips nearly twitching as he bucked back against that immovable object over him, Genji worked his hand between their shifting bodies, mind fogged and nearly lost to it already but _needy_ for more, and freed his own swollen, throbbing cock. Smooth and long and free of scarring, the mat of ruined skin ending at his pelvis, he was still somewhat dwarfed by Ra’s mighty offering. He nearly sobbed in relief as he was freed, bucking up against Zenyatta’s shaft helplessly. He couldn’t have stopped the moan that tore free of him then, feeling that first pass of smooth, ribbed silicone against his flesh, knowing this was his Master, knowing that nothing else would ever be enough. 

“Genji,” His name was whispered again, this time in breathless supplication, and _fuck_ he could listen to that voice tremble with need and never hear enough. “I can feel you, my dearest, oh I can feel how you love this!” Zenyatta thrust against him, faster now, seeking more, as they moved together, dancing, dueling, interlocked, and Genji shuddered as more even than his own pleasure, his mind was lapped by bare sensations and pleasures not his own, transmitted across Ra’s feeble network.

That bite of teeth dulled from mauling to claiming, love bites across his limited cyberized awareness, and though he could feel the Ra program trying, doing all it could to eat him, swallow him alive, it only managed to stamp itself across his mind and soul with all the permanence of footprints in sand. 

Genji welcomed it, surrendered to it all; let this God Program try, let it chew on him, mark him. Let it lock teeth and claws around him if might allow Zenyatta room to breathe, to distract this starving God from any others it could seek to consume. Belly tight with pleasure, nearly delirious, he almost opened his mouth to beg it to never let him go, but all he could do was moan. “Zenyatta, Master, don’t stop! I’m close, I’m getting so _close!_”

Over him he could feel Zenyatta’s own desperation mounting, could feel it in the Omnic’s frantic movements with him, the way his pace quickened and his hips thrust against Genji erratically, making the cyborg’s own cock drool precum, smearing it against the both of them. He could feel it too across their network, feel his Master’s need, feel how unbearable it was. It fed into his own and he offered his desire and need back into it, a completed circle and they both cried out. 

“Zenyattaaa--hhahhh!”

“Genji!”

Even Ra’s dark hunger seemed to weaken under the sensations transmitting rapid fire between them, the climbing, building connection that near throbbed with love and pleasure, hitting a fever pitch—

Zenyatta roared, trembling over him, his climax rocketing through both of them. 

Genji felt his Master’s finish in every single nerve, cumming helplessly in response, hips bucking up, spilling thick and white over his own stomach and Zenyatta’s silicone cock. 

Together they rode it out, pressed close, Genji panting into one of Zenyatta’s shoulders, his breath fogging the metal. They rocked, cocks stroking, smearing each twitching spurt of Genji’s cum between them, slowly winding down. 

He breathed for a minute, feeling open and raw in all the best ways, his cock still oversensitive and throbbing. He thought—just for that moment—that they’d come down from their high together, forgetting—just for that moment—that though this is Zenyatta, that it was Zenyatta departed from the serenity he’d known in his Master.

Zenyatta gathered himself again _bucked_, cock fucking through the cum on Genji’s stomach, rubbing every ridge down Genji’s own still-throbbing dick. He cried out, in surprise as much as pleasure and felt the Ra Program press again, gnash its teeth on his network connection and he _knew_ they were far from done.

He felt how Zenyatta’s soul still trembled with desperation, still starved for him—by the Iris had his Master always felt this way?—and knew he didn’t have long before that need grew again fevered and wild. 

“Genji,” Zenyatta’s voice was low but trembling, slightly hazy, “I am sorry, I still,” He struggled to find the words, even with their bodies locked like this and Genji’s cum rubbing between them, “I still need—”

“Master, I know,” He pulled Zenyatta closer, felt the shallow, unceasing rocking of his Master’s hips, unable to stop even now. Genji kissed over the smooth, white face, needing desperately to do something with his mouth. “I know what you need.”

Quickly, he worked a hand underneath him, undoing the covering there, and, coating two fingers messily with his own cum, he reached down and pushed them roughly inside himself. He moaned, feeling some burn, but his body was long since tuned to resist pain, and the stretch of his fingers, the promise of what was going to fuck into that tight hole, was well worth it and so much sweeter. 

_“Genji,”_ Zenyatta gasped and the cyborg knew he was never going to ever tire of hearing his Master moan his name, “I can feel it, feel what you’re doing.” The beak nuzzled up his neck and Genji threw his head back obligingly, giving the demigod all the room he wanted. 

“Wish they were yours,” Genji panted tightly, twisting his fingers and they both moaned. “Wish I could feel you stuff those long fingers inside me, stretch me open, _Master!_” His voice caught as he found that spot inside himself and pleasure lit like fire through his body. They moaned in tandem as that single small movement sings between their connection. 

“I know this is your first time,” Genji whispered nearly feverish, and licked a stripe right over the arc of the beak, squeezing his own fingers tight just because he could. “Wish I could make this everything you deserve, Master, but I’ll make it so good. I promise I’ll make this so good for you.” 

Zenyatta laughed, low and breathy, and nuzzled him, “It is everything I could have ever wanted, Genji, my dearest. I have your trust, your devotion, your love. What more could I need?” He whispered, one hand moving to cup Genji’s neck, fingers sliding touches along the interlocking pieces there, the touch caressing and yet the hold somehow claiming. “You are all I have wanted, Genji.”

He then reared back and pushed Genji’s knees against his chest and held them there, holding him open as he watched his student push two fingers in and out of his tight, greedy hole. 

“F-fuck,” Genji felt like he flushed through his entire body, but didn’t stop, slowing his fingers, teasing both of them. He scissored his fingertips, stretching his hole open, letting Zenyatta see just how tight and _human_ he still was, beneath the cybernetics and augments. The grip on Genji’s legs tightened. “Come on, Master,” he panted, eyes dark, watching the Omnic over him. “Have me. Let go and _take_ what you want.”

“Ohh, my dear, I’m selfish enough to take anything you offer me.” Holding Genji in position, pinned there, the hold unyielding, Zenyatta shifted into position. Long cock prodding against his student’s hole, bumping the fingers still slowly fucking within. 

Genji moved them, holding his own ass open, completely exposed, begging for it with all but his mouth. 

The tip of Zenyatta’s rigid, ribbed cock teased against his rim once, twice, and then he bucked deeply, seating himself with one long, smooth thrust. “Oh! Ohh, Genji, you are _tight._”

“Ahhh!” Genji threw back his head and moaned, loud and shameless, the sound echoing and going nowhere in the basement of the temple, his world tilting as suddenly he’s stuffed full. He squeezed down on his Master’s cock, feeling every single inch of it, but before he could get even a breath back, get his head around this new world he where he knew how to felt to have his ass stretched and filled by _Zenyatta_, his Master did it again. He pulled back, the ribbed slide of him teasing against Genji’s hole before he fucked back _inside_. 

He did it again. 

And again. 

And _again._

Using his weight, Zenyatta fucked down into him relentlessly. 

“Hahhhh! Ahhhh! Mast—Zenyatta—!” Genji wailed brokenly, head tossing against the stone floor, unable to act other than to moan and cry out as his Master fucked him. His hands scrabbled at Zenyatta’s chest, clinging, clutching, _anything_ to anchor him down. Each time the Omnic pulled out, Genji squeezed, greedy for more, begging with his body to feel him fuck that long cock back inside. 

And each time Zenyatta obliged, pistoning in and out of him like a _machine_, Genji sobbed and cried out in agony, in utter rapture, panting and gasped for more, harder. “Yes! Yes, yes, yes, don’t stop!”

“Anything! Anything, Genji!” And Zenyatta, his own helpless moans falling freely from his voice box, gave him everything he asked for and everything he didn’t, pounding in with an utter relentlessness he should’ve expected, blue eyes locked onto his own green-stained-brown, blown wide in ecstasy. 

Genji whined, high and thready, but didn’t look away, the eye contact almost too much for him as his Master fucked him, joined so deeply in body and mind. 

“Genji, Oh, Genji, my dear, my love, _Genji,_” Zenyatta didn’t let him go for anything, murmured his name over and over like a prayer, never looking away, never letting himself see anything other than _Genji._

“I love you,” Genji gasped out, consumed, eaten alive, utterly devoured by Zenyatta, squirming, eyes rolling back as his Master drove into him harder, _harder_, metal hips slapping against his ass as he was fucked. He surrendered himself to it, willing to take it all, and felt the Ra Program thrill in its own simple way at that, to seize his submission and its victory and over him, _in him_, he felt Zenyatta tremble at the deep trust he knew he’d been gifted. 

Augmented, cyberized, and Genji was still only human, and he pushed a hand down between their bodies, reaching for his own cock, weeping precum already, white beads dripping sloppily from his slit, desperate for some kind of relief. 

Zenyatta’s hand snapped around his wrist like a vise, holding him away and Genji keened as the Omnic ground his cock in slowly, to punctuate his point. A brief flash of Ra in the action. 

“Master please,” He gasped, practically begging, but gladly humping himself down on his Master’s cock gladly, desperate for _something_, letting it stretch his greedy hole, “Fuck, I need to cum so badly, _please._”

Zenyatta shifted, moving the leg he had released up onto his shoulder, keeping hold of Genji’s wrist. “On me, or not at all,” He gasped out, the sound utterly enchanting from a body that didn’t need to breathe. And then, low, nearly a growl, “I am not finished with you yet.”

Genji’s cock twitched against his stomach, drooling messily, and before he could utter a sound, Zenyatta reared back, sliding almost all the way out of him, shifted, and fucked back _in_ and found his prostate unerringly. 

“Hahhhhhhhhhh—!” Genji’s voice broke, nearly screaming, mind blanking out. Zenyatta shuddered, nearly collapsing over him as the feeling of it wound through their feedback loop, bowing over him. His hips continued fucking forward though, jacking into it with every desperate movement. 

“Genji!” He held the cyborg tightly, fucking against it with every heavy thrust, mercilessly wringing raw noise from his student. 

“Yes!” Genji could barely _think,_ “M-more, Master, make me cum!”

“Yes—,” That dark sound, the greedy heat of it sharing through their minds, as much a starving God as a monk, “I want to watch you spill yourself again, see you cum because of _me—_”

“I am!” Genji realized he was speeding towards the edge at terminal velocity, legs shaking and quivering, trying to hold on just a few seconds longer. “Master! Zenyatta I’m gonna—I’m gonna—!” Face flushed, eyes hazy and wet he looked up between his legs at the Omnic over him and squeezed tightly.

_“Genji!”_ The sound ground out from his Master’s voice box, “I can feel how close—I can—” 

“With me!” He begged, needing it, “Cum with me! Finish with—“ He moaned as Zenyatta’s frantic thrusting grew erratic, his tight hole still swallowing up down every inch of him, “Zenyatta! Yes, yes, love you, M-Master, Zenya—Ahhh!” His voice cracked on a moan, drawing out that vowel into a wild cry. 

Zenyatta shouted as he slammed into him, cumming hard, massive body going rigid and trembling, stuffing his cock in as deeply as he could. The second he felt his Master’s climax rip through their connection Genji’s cock erupted sloppily, spurting helplessly. He couldn’t do anything but shake and ride it out, hips jerking, clamping down like a vise on the Omnic cock deep inside him. 

He fell back, going limp and completely _fucked out_ against the floor, panting heavily. The echoes of their shared finish rippled between them and he shivered, hands roving up and along the ribbing on Zenyatta’s chest. His Master released the steel hold he had on Genji’s legs, letting them slump down to the side. Above him, Zenyatta somehow managed to hold his arms braced, suspended, keeping hundreds of pounds of trembling, pleasure-drunk metal off his boneless student. 

Even though he had no need to catch his breath, it took them equally long moments to gather themselves. A fog of satiated pleasure still humming between them, relaying like a completed circuit. 

Even if Genji wasn’t completely _gone_ on Zenyatta, he didn’t know if he could ever settle for having regular sex again and feel satisfied. The connection like this was too intimate, the pleasure too heightened. He felt ruined in all the best ways.

“Are you alright?” 

Genji laughed hoarsely at Zenyatta’s soft, concerned question and gave him a hazy smile. “Ohh, you know the answer to that already, Master.”

The Omnic lifted a hand and drew long, gentle fingers down Genji’s cheek, tracing the lines of one of the prominent scars there. Around them, the nine Omnic orbs drifted, steady and glowing gold. “I was not gentle. Not like I would have wished to be.” He shifted carefully, sliding his cock out. Genji moaned softly in loss, feeling stretched open and left empty. 

“I’ve no complaints,” He murmured, smiling a bit dopily. “We can do gentle next time. And every time after if that’s what you want.” He grinned again, “But I am hoping we can do this again too.” He caught Zenyatta’s stroking fingers in his own and pressed a kiss against his palm. 

Zenyatta chuckled, warm and familiar, amused, exasperated, and fond, “As I believe I said, my dear, I am selfish when it comes to you. I will take all you favor me with.”

“Ohhh, Master, in that case,” He leaned up, body aching deliciously even from such a small motion, and wrapped a hand around Zenyatta’s cock, permanently stiff and conveniently still everted from his body. “Maybe next time can be right now.”

Zenyatta groaned, pushing into Genji’s grip. “Imp,” He accused, breathless and tender.

“You love it,” Genji told him, confident, feeling how much through Ra’s connection. He knew likely when they had finished they would need to disconnect, but anything he could do to postpone the separation was an endeavor worth pursuing. 

“I love _you,_” Zenyatta hummed. “And if you are so insatiable, my dear, I would ask one more thing of you.”

“Anything,” Genji whispered, and leaned up, pressing soft, hot kisses along the curve of the Omnic’s beak. 

“I would like you to take me, this time.”

Genji blinked, well-fucked and lethargic, catching up slowly, “You want to trade places?”

Zenyatta nodded, “I offer you my body, in turn.” He turned around as he kneeled over him, the wrap at his waist hiked up to expose his pelvic chassis, and the small posterior hole nearly hidden there. 

Genji swallowed, his own cock waking again with a hunger that bordered gluttony, seeing that tight, tempting little hole, lined with ridges of soft silicone, lubricated and so inviting. “You’re sure?”

Zenyatta hummed softly, “I want your claim on this body, Genji. If I am to keep it, make it my own, I want you to leave your mark on it, as you had left so many on my old body. And as you have left innumerable on my heart and soul.”

Genji swallowed, reaching down to trace a finger around the soft rim, biting his lip at how warm it was to the touch. A shiver ran through the metal body before him and he pressed deeper, letting the tip of a finger slip inside. 

“So sensitive,” He murmured, wiggling just a little and drinking in the low sound of appreciation the Omnic made. 

“Omniums are old technology now,” Zenyatta said, nearly panting even from such light touches. “The printers, though rarely use to manufacture fully functioning Omnics, are capable of producing models with higher fidelity throughout nearly all parts.” He gasped as Genji’s finger pushed in deeply, down to his knuckle. “It is an—Oh, Genji, _yes_—ah, advantage that I had not thought to ever have for myself.”

“Could you have not felt this before?” He asked, leaning up to nuzzle at Zenyatta’s back. God, he was so much _bigger_ now. 

“I could have,” Zenyatta said, voice breathy and hazy as he continued to enjoy his student’s ministrations. “But not so sharply. Not so completely. It would have been an incredible experience, but this—“ His back arched, and Genji licked his lips, watching all the moving mechanisms flex and work, “Oh, it is no wonder organic life loves to breed.”

Genji grinned, kissing oer the sweep of a shoulder blade. “Oh, now there’s an idea.” He pushed a second finger in, just to hear Zenyatta moan and just because he could. “I do believe I’ve been invited to _take._”

Zenyatta rumbled, a low humming grind, “Please do. But let me see your face. Another time I will bend in whatever manner you wish to possess me, but please.”

Genji nodded eagerly against Zenyatta’s spine, mind going momentarily hazy at the idea of bending Zenyatta over a surface, or laying him on his side and hiking one long leg over his shoulder, or face down in bed. “Turn around.”

They shifted together, Genji’s fingers slipping out and his hands settling against the smooth cloth, still rumpled and stained about Zenyatta’s waist. He had to look up to meet his blue eyes, and reached one hand to trace the sweep of an immobile eyelid. “Love your eyes now, Master,” He murmured. “Love how blue they are. Like your orbs are and like your array was.” He grew quiet, a little melancholy. “I do miss your array. You have no idea how many times I was distracted and just counted those blue lights over and over in the years together.”

Zenyatta hummed, his orbs flashing blue and tilted his head in consideration. A moment later, a nine-point grid of lights superimposed blue in the air before his brow. “Better now?”

Genji blinked and laughed, tickled and happy. “Oh very much.” He reached with both hands and cupped that long eagle’s head, hands framing it. “There you are, Master.”

“Here I am,” Zenyatta agreed softly, and leaned forward, bumping his beak against Genji’s smiling lips. He pressed kisses against it readily, dragging his mouth slowing along the smooth metal and enamel there. His mouth tingled, sensitive, the surface delightfully smooth. 

His searching fingers smoothed up the long, metal thighs and under that cloth drape, going back to find that little hole he wanted so badly to acquaint himself with. “Strange to see you without your old saffron pants, but I am a bit of a fan at how easy it is to get under this.” He pressed a finger inside again easily, sighing a bit, momentarily consumed by a fantasy of pushing his head under the wrap the Omnic wore, how it might look if his antennae-topped head tented Zenyatta’s clothing as he pleasured his Master with his mouth. 

He definitely needed to hold onto that one. 

Zenyatta laughed, breathless, rocking down onto Genji’s finger, sighing happily even as he trembled when a second was stuffed inside. “I wanted to change from this silly thing but none of my clothing fits anymore—ahhh!” metal hips bucked, the microsensors built into his tight hole keying off. “Genji—oh, please, my dear—do not wait longer,” Zenyatta pleaded, soft and breathless. 

Genji laughed, a breathless noise of pure excitement and pushed him forward, fingers slipping out again reluctantly, knowing that Zenyatta allowed his Student to topple him in this moment more than being truly moved. Kneeling over the tall Omnic, seeing him spread out below him, Genji’s mouth went dry.

“I can’t believe I really get to have this.” He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Zenyatta scoffed. 

“I have belonged to you since before I want to admit. I have been yours even as you relied on me for support and guidance, and to ask, to want, would’ve been a terrible conflict of both our interests.” One long-fingered hand came up to cup Genji’s cheek and the cyborg leaned into greedily. “But often logic has little reign on the desires of the heart or of the soul. It was enough that you shared yourself with me, even in friendship. But the fact remains, Genji, that I am _yours._”

Genji turned and kissed the warm metal of Zenyatta’s palm, reaching down and stroking his still-rigid cock, the urgency of earlier banked, but the burn of desire just as strong. Undiminished by the wait and shared words. “I wouldn’t say that we have lost time to make up for, Master,” He began, just a slight edge of teasing to his voice, “But I’m certainly going to enjoy some new learning material from my teacher.” 

Zenyatta’s laugh was bright with affection and surprise, strong enough that it carried over their connection, “Imp.” He beckoned with one long, crooked finger, blue array burning and orbs shining gold. “Let us learn this together then.”

“Gladly,” Genji murmured, breathy, shifting into positon, lining himself up with Zenyatta’s body, taking a moment, bracing himself. 

Hoping, if he were honest, that he didn’t cum immediately as soon as he got inside. The idea of it was enough to already make him feel like he was unraveling.

“Genji,” Zenyatta whispered, and Genji, biting his lip, thrust inside. 

“Hahh,” he dropped his head, shuddering as each inch of his cock slid through that tight, hot passage, the ridged silicone inside gripping and rubbing along his throbbing length. “Oh, God. Master. Oh.”

Zenyatta groaned, loud and greedy, hips bearing down to suck even more of his student’s cock inside himself, arms bracing above his head against the floor.

Genji whined, mouth falling open, face flushing, “If—_Fuck_, Zenyatta—if I cum really fast, don’t judge me? God there’s no comparison—Oh you feel _perfect_ on me.”

Zenyatta hummed, the sound dragging on far past what human lung capacity would allow, “Oh I did not think there would be a difference, feeling a human organ possess me, instead of metal fingers.”

_“Fuck, Master,_ God, you’re _killing me—_”

“But it is overwhelming,” he sounded almost awed.

“I’m overwhelming, am I?” Genji tried valiantly for an impertinent quip, but it came so breathy and needy there was no question that he was feeling just as overcome.

“I can feel your heartbeat.” 

It should’ve been ridiculous, it should’ve been silly, it should’ve been completely superfluous with the connection that thrummed between their networks, a feedback loop of love and wonder spinning slowly between them. But Genji felt inexplicably close to tears and leaned down, kissing over Zenyatta’s beak, rocking his hips slowly inside the Omnic body. “It’s beating for you, Master. My heart, my soul, my body.” With each word his pace increased, “I love you, Zenyatta. Oh how I love you.”

“Genji,” Zenyatta’s arms came up, embracing him, one hand splaying over the long curve of Genji’s spine, the other wrapping tight in the trailing silk scarf attached to his helm. “Oh, my dearest, my love—”

Biting his lip Genji thrust in faster, hips slapping loudly against his Master’s pelvic chassis, and spurted precum inside him, losing himself hopelessly. Making the tight manufactured hole so much slicker, wetter, as every pump of his hips wrung another gush from him. 

Zenyatta lifted his hips, welcoming him deeper, begging for more, long legs locking around Genji’s waist, pulling him in every time he pulled back, the clawed heels pressing divots into his ass. 

Genji felt drunk on it, fucking in, and in, and _in_, over and over. He’d never felt anything as incredible as the way Zenyatta’s posterior hole stroked him as he pulled out, leaving just the head inside, before thrusting back in, sheathing himself deeply, and then that was just as unbelievable. 

“Genji,” Zenyatta begged, hands cupping his face, “Let go—_oh_! Yes, just like—let go, take with abandon, please, let me sate you—”

Groaned loud, cock throbbing, he braced his arms on the stone floor, and he fucked in with abandon. His hips stuttered as his Master’s body took him, trying in his haze to feed the sensations back into Zenyatta, let him know how _perfect_ he was—

Only to get a wave of desperate feeling and limitless affection in turn and a ghost of the unbearable feeling of being filled and fucked and completely possessed—

“Mast—_Zenyatta!_” He moaned, loud and shameless and drove in harder, arms shaking. “Yes, _fuck._”

“Yes! Oh Genji!” A hand pulled at the silk scarf, tugging his head back and he felt the curve of the beak nuzzle against his throat. “So good, my dear, so good inside, Better than I ever dreamed, I knew you would be—.”

“_Fuck,_” Genji gasped, keening a little at the idea of Zenyatta imagining this, imagining _him_, fantasizing about the two of them, locked and intimate—“Tell me,” He growled, he _begged,_ “Tell me what you imagined.”

“I imagined making love to you,” Zenyatta said on a beautiful, fluttering gasp. “I imagined touching and worshipping your body with the same tenderness we shared for most of our time together in all things. Moving slowly, savoring every touch, basking in every one of your sighs and moans I earned. Our bodies moving together, building speed, drinking in endearments and confessions as they spilled from your beautiful, panting mouth.” 

Genji’s pace slowed, matching the fantasy, shuddering at the thought of it, at the thought of his Master—his unflappable, serene Master—pleasuring himself to the fantasy of the two of them just as Genji himself did with such desperation. “Wh-what else, Master?” His cock throbbed, “What else?”

He knew there was more; that there were dozens if not hundreds of fantasies his Master must have had if he had born this torch for so long. He was far too curious to ever have one single preference. 

Zenyatta’s back arched, driving his tight hold down harder on Genji, “I imagined the two of us under the Himalayan night, warmed by a fire, feeling the pleasure of your mouth.”

The cyborg gasped, hips hitching in erratically, mouth watering, his own brief fantasy from before flashing through his mind. “We’re doing that—God, I want to swallow you whole—”

The hand still gripping Genji’s trailing silk scarf tightened and pulled again and he moaned, held fast.

“I imagined pressing you against the wall, some days,” Zenyatta said, voice low and laden with Ra’s growl, “Holding you there with the weight of my metal body and pressing inside you, feeling all your wonderful organic softness and heat, making you shout and beg for more—”

_“Oh God—”_ Genji gasped, fucking into Zenyatta with abandon, hips snapping in, slapping loudly against the metal chassis. “Ahh—! Master! Oh fuck, I can’t last!”

“Do not,” Zenyatta moaned with him, hands cupping Genji’s ass and squeezing, pulling him in. “I cannot, I—”

Genji’s eyes locked with Zenyatta’s pure blue ones, mouth open and panting, “Together, cum with me—”

Nearly on command, Zenyatta arched in a beautiful parabolic curve as his climax tore through him, crying out, voice frayed with static. He shook with the force of it, gripping Genji hard enough to bruise and Genji was _done—_

He nearly sobbed his Master’s name, holding on tight, cumming and cumming, hips hitching as he spilled himself inside the Omnic beneath him. “Zenyatta, haahh, so _good!_”

Zenyatta’s head tossed against the stone, scraping, taking everything, hands scrabbling and scratching for purchase, quaking with the force of it looping between them. 

Genji slumped forward, utter spent, his whole body shaking and trembling. Beneath him Zenyatta splayed out, fingers stroking idly along his back. 

Then, finally, all too soon, the Ra Program disconnected the network link between them. Genji missed the link-up almost immediately, and yet it was also a relief, like he’d been holding a great weight for long hours, or been in a noisy room and finally had a moment alone. 

“Incredible,” Zenyatta murmured, voice still slow and soft in these moments after climax. 

“Mmm,” Genji hummed in agreement, nuzzling whatever metal he could reach. 

His Master chuckled, “A stirring summation.” 

“Mm,” Genji managed again, wondering if he could even move his legs. 

One of Zenyatta’s fingers traced the arc of one of the stabilizing antenna on his head fondly, and teased, “Did I do you lasting harm, my dear?”

“Ask me again in a week,” Genji said, feeling wrung out and wonderful.

Zenyatta chuckled again and shifted, letting Genji’s cock slip free from his body and stood, easily scooping up his student’s smaller form in his arms. Lighting the way with his orbs, he carried Genji back up into the temple proper, heading for the living quarters. “The other Shambali are still in absence,” He murmured as he walked. “Time enough to get you settled in.”

Genji, between the travel here to the temple and the marathon sex was utterly exhausted. He felt used up, but that openness where they’d been so intimately connected still felt strange, like a missing tooth, and he found enough energy to ask a question that needed an answer. 

“Master, you have control?”

Zenyatta hummed, the sound familiar and easing, and after due consideration, stepping into the hall shared by the monks for hibernation. “The Ra Program has fulfilled its protocols, though unsuccessful in its efforts to override local networks and AI, and is currently overloaded and processing through data. At the rate it is going it will be quite some time before it finishes.”

That sounded secure enough for the time being, and Genji’s eyes fluttered closed. Even now, he would not truly sleep, but the siren’s song of hibernation dragged him down like a stone underwater, and he felt the brush of the beak again. 

“Rest,” Zenyatta soothed. “All is safe, Genji. Rest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short epilogue to tie it up, and that'll be up in a couple days!
> 
> A huge thanks again for the contributing artists in this chapter, Lacerta and Tascha!
> 
> [Lacertar's Tumblr](https://lacertae-dreamscape.tumblr.com/post/189157746702/this-was-my-contribution-as-an-artist-to-balenaes)
> 
> [Tascha's Twitter](https://twitter.com/DogTascha/status/1196586912162754560?s=09)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the small epilogue to cap off this thing. I apologize this is so late going up, but I was sick over the weekend and then had a crisis about the words to end on. I'm not totally happy with it, but it needed to go up.

Genji strode through the temple halls quickly, barely holding back from running—barely—and going straight to one of the terraces, where he was told he could find his Master. It was a clear, bright day outside the temple, and the temperature was up enough that it was almost tolerable. Worry squeezed at his chest, but he reigned it in ruthlessly. Kaiyatta had merely seemed excited and agitated, she had not said anything was wrong, just that it was urgent, and Zenyatta had been indisposed somehow all day—

He heard voices as he approached, the familiar cadence of Zenyatta’s voice joined by a few others, monks Genji recognized, and took a slow breath. It did not sound as though anything were wrong, but it had been only scant weeks since the Vault in Cairo and he was still never certain when or if things may suddenly tip out of control. 

But he lived each day on a knife’s edge right now, constantly vigilant, watching to see any of sign of the Ra Program struggling to resurface from beneath Zenyatta’s kind AI. 

He rounded the corner and stepped outside onto the terrace, calling out. “Is everything alright, Master?” He asked, “Kaiyatta said—”

He cut off abruptly, catching sight of Zenyatta seated, floating a few centimeters the stone floor, a habit he’d begun so he didn’t tower over everyone, a few novice monks frozen near him, uncertain in the face of Genji’s entrance. Neither of those things was what made him trail off, slack-jawed with shock. 

Instead of the bronzy chassis and white face, his body was now matte black with accents of ochre, the great hooked beak and nemes headdress glittering brightly in gold. As Zenyatta beheld him, the nine point array lit up, glowing softly in the air in front of his brow.

“Master,” He murmured, the words drying up in his throat. 

Zenyatta hummed, clearly amused and glanced at the two novices that still stood frozen. “If you would not mind excusing us?”

They bowed and hurried off, sending glances at Genji as they passed, half awed, half frightened. On any other day he might be glad to know he could still strike such feeling into the Omnics here. 

In this moment he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from Zenyatta. 

“I apologize,” His Master said, voice genuinely sorry but still warm. “It was meant to be a surprise,” He gestured to himself. “But I realize now the unintended anxiousness my absence may have caused.”

Genji approached slowly, eyes wandering over him. “You could have told me what you were up to. Was there a technician in the village, or—?” 

Zenyatta hummed in agreement, “I asked one to come to the village to render a service.” He looked down at his own long talon-tipped toes, wiggling them a bit, seeing the curved hooks shimmer in the sun. “It was not a spontaneous choice.”

“I suppose it was not,” Genji agreed quietly, dropping to one knee before him, eyes still flying helplessly over his Master’s body, changed again.

“Do you not like it?” Zenyatta asked, turning his hand over, eyes looking over black fingers and golden joints. The question was asked idly, but Genji knew his words were still valued. 

Genji took the hand gently in his own, playing with the fingers, “My hesitation has nothing to do with preference. But I do want to know why,” He said softly. 

Zenyatta nodded slowly, “I wanted,” he paused, considering his words carefully. “I wanted to feel more in control of this body I find myself inhabiting. Exert some external claim upon it, mark it as my own.”

Genji straightened, worried, “Do you not feel in control?”

“Not exactly,” He amended. “It is more… I have seen humans do something similar. Ink their skin with words and art when they have lived a milestone. I wanted to reflect the change in my person in a way that I chose.” His voice turned a touch wry, “Not just in the beak that was thrust upon me.”

Genji nodded, closing both hands around Zenyatta’s larger one, “But Ra is… quiet?” His eyes beneath the visor searched over the unmoving Omnic face. “Its hunger is not pushing you?”

Zenyatta squeezed Genji hands, and when he spoke his voice was rich with affection. “I am well, my dear. Ra is silent, for the time being. It has been more and more quiescent of late, since we came together.” He grew quiet then, and when he did speak again he was subdued, “I think it is beginning to integrate. I know less where it ends and where I begin now. The gnawing, slavering hunger comes occasionally, but it bleeds into my desire for you, and it feels as if it were my own. But no, Ra does not push me, not beyond what I may easily rebuff.”

Genji’s shoulders relaxed, and he nodded, “I think you’re beautiful, Master. In this form as in any other.” There was a pause and he said, “I am leering at you, but I still have the visor on.”

His reward was Zenyatta’s laughter, as musical as the toll of the temple bells or the chime of his orbs. “I had something of an inkling that a change in aesthetic would not deter you.” 

“Nothing would deter me,” Genji said, leaning up to knock his visor gently in imitation of a kiss against the curve of Zenyatta’s beak. 

Chuckling, Zenyatta reached out and pulled him close, Genji squawking a bit as the Omnic settled him on his lap, large enough to cradle the cyborg comfortably. “I know, my love. I never doubted you.”

“This is a bonus,” Genji agreed, settling in comfortably, head tilting back as if to see his Master’s face. 

Zenyatta hummed again, fingers idly stroking along one of Genji’s thighs, though without any true intent to arouse, gaze fixed outward, on the mountains. 

Genji let the quiet stand a moment, “Something still occupies your thoughts though, Master. Are you happy with this?”

“There is a concept in Buddhism that I have always been fond of,” Zenyatta said. “And I find myself thinking of it more and more in these days of late.” The days after the Ra Vault, he did not say. “Have you ever heard of ‘Sunyata’, Genji?”

It had been actual decades since Genji had to know anything about Buddhism, but dredged the long-ago memories of his childhood in Hanamura up, attempting to remember. “It’s… emptiness, isn’t it?”

“Mm, it means many things, emptiness being one of them. But it means,” He paused, considering again. “It refers to the non-self. That all things are empty of intrinsic nature. It is something I have meditated on hundreds of times, in my years here. The idea that true self is—”

“—Without form,” Genji said, amused, picking it up. 

Zenyatta pinched his thigh, “Imp,” He said, amused. “But it was something I felt was important to understand in truly internalizing the idea that Omnics have souls. It is something I feel is all the more important to me now. It has brought me tranquility in this time of upheaval; acceptance.”

“Of yourself?” Genji asked, sobered, sad.

“Myself, and of Ra. Of my place in things now.”

Trying for levity, Genji teased, “Should I call you ‘Sunyatta’ now?”

His master chuckled, but tilted his head, giving it real thought, before finally speaking, “No. It had occurred to me to perhaps take a different name in the wake of this, but… no.” He said it now with some decisive finality, as if just reaching the decision himself. “When I joined the Shambali initially, I took on the name ‘Zenyatta’ as my identity, the birth of a new life in faith, and the monumental change I adopted, devoting myself to belief and religion.” He leaned his head against Genji’s, eyes sliding closed, nestling close. 

“Master?”

“I do not want to give this incident the same importance of that choice,” he murmured. “I do not want to let this Program have changed me so. I was happy as I was, and I so dearly want to keep hold of the life that I have.”

Genji’s arms went up and around Zenyatta’s head and headdress, tilting his visor up against the beak. “Your heart is mine, Master?” He murmured, phrasing it as a question though even through the short time they’d come together he had learned to think and mean it with confidence, hearing his Master repeat it over and over in tender moments of affection and heated moments of passion. 

“Of course it is,” The monk agreed immediately. “Always.”

“Then I shall hold it for you, help you keep it,” Genji spoke softly, “I will anchor you. As long as I have half a chance to keep you, then I shall never let you go. Not for Gods, and not for anything. ”

Zenyatta chuckled softly, holding him close, his tight grip the only thing that gave away the depth of his emotion. “Oh my dear, I have been anchored to you since long before Ra, and want nothing more in this world than to remain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End!
> 
> Thank you so much, everyone who read this and all the other Big Bang works. 
> 
> The idea behind this was wanting to flip the inherent risk of Zenyatta getting munched by a God Program on its head. Originally, I had this idea of Zenyatta consuming a God as a way to potentially end a long fic, but I didn't have any good ideas for what kind of fic and ultimately I wasn't interested in writing it. So I did my best to figure out how to turn the concept into its own story. I don't think I was entirely successful, some of this story I'm immensely proud of and some I'm deeply unhappy with. (It also went through several not-so-serious titles, including 'Ra Ra Ah Ah Ah', 'Oh God is this Vore?', and 'Nom nom nom.')
> 
> On the whole, I'm glad I chose this story and I'm glad I got it finished. It would not have happened without the unrelenting support of the artists who gave their time to illustrate moments of this fic. Their work amazes me. 
> 
> If you haven't gone and followed them or given them some love, please do!

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna be posting every three days or so till it's out, and there are six chapters and a short epilogue. Chapter lengths are entirely inconsistent, some are much longer than others, but I broke the story where breaks seemed most natural. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Check out the other stories in the Big Bang collection!


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